How Linda Died

how linda died

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how linda died

frank davey

ECW PRESS

Copyright © ECW Press, 2002. The publication of How Linda Died has been generously supported by the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. Canada All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW PRESS. CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Davey, Frank. 1940How Linda died ISBN 1-55022-497-2

i. Davey, Linda - Health. 2. Cancer - Patients - Canada - Biography. I. Title. RC265.6.D39D39 2002 362.i'96994'oo92 C2ooi-9c>3584

Cover and interior design by Guylaine Regimbald - SOLO DESIGN. Typesetting by Yolande Martel. This book is set in Haarlemmer. Printed by Transcontinental. Distributed in Canada by General Distribution Services, 325 Humber College Boulevard, Etobicoke, Ontario Mgw JCT,. Distributed in the United States by Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, II 60610. Distributed in Europe by Turnaround Publisher Services, Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London N2Z 6T2. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Wakefield Press, 17 Rundle Street (Box 2266), Kent Town, South Australia 5071. Published by ECW PRESS Suite 200 2120 Queen Street East Toronto, Ontario M4E IE2

Canada ecwpress.com PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

for Michael and Sara George and Angela

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Contents 1. What I Began to Try Writing 2. Journ-1 21 3. After

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Life and death: they are one, at core entwined, Who understands himself from his own strain presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flames. RAINER MARIA RILKE

i. what i began to try writing

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March 9,1999 Linda's reluctant to drive. She's not eager to go out, even just to shop for groceries. I've been delaying writing this. She's been asking me to make phone calls for her. To answer letters. Once she used to slap at my hand if I dared touch her phone while it was ringing. Now she's not even eager to argue, one of our old pleasures. I remember a couple of weeks ago telling Mike and Sara that their mom is not just mellowing, she's becoming less self-confident. I think I began noticing this shortly after Christmas. March 12, 1999 A registered envelope from the Law Society arrived today. She took it upstairs and dumped it on her desk beside other unopened mail. Over the last few months there've been numerous letters from the society, some of them registered, but I don't think she's opened any. They could have something to do with her dormant trust accounts. Or maybe with her annual retiree's fees. Occasionally one of her old Toronto clients will phone. What I've overheard her say makes me think that she's trying to deflect them, or that she doesn't want to hear what they're telling. Most seem to be friendly calls, but she's responding with platitudes, polite impatience. I don't understand. She's usually been passionate to advise. She's also been receiving regular faxes from the medical lobby group she helped found, Partners in Research. I don't think she's been replying to these, either, even though Partners' main office is here in London, and she's one of its patrons and directors. But she is spending more and more time playing repetitive computer games—various solitaires, mah-jongg, jigsaw puzzles. Five or six hours a day. I wonder if she is depressed, but 13

she doesn't otherwise act depressed. It feels bizarre to be watching her, to be almost spying, to be making these notes on her, but I don't know what else to do. March 14,1999 Linda's back in her computer room playing mah-jongg. She's been playing most of the evening. She drove to a nearby supermarket today and bought another fifteen-dollar fancy cake—another bland white cake covered with sugar roses and flowery icing. She used to be a canny, skeptical, aggressive shopper. These are cakes that in other years she would have thought mediocre—her tastes have previously run to things from gourmet bakeries or her own fancy baking. Mike and I have been declining to eat the cakes, and she herself doesn't seem to enjoy them once she tastes them. Eighty percent of each cake goes stale and has to be thrown out. I've tried telling her that we don't like them, but she's replied that they looked pretty good. And a few days later bought another. Mike and I have also tried keeping each one on the kitchen counter as long as possible so that its desiccated presence might discourage her from buying more. To no avail. I wonder if I should have been writing these things down earlier. Can't figure out how to talk to her about them. Maybe everything's okay. March 15,1999 Each day I seem to notice another odd thing that I know I must have begun seeing some time ago. If that makes any sense. This morning as I was making coffee I saw that two tomatoes had collapsed into their own rotting juices at the back of the kitchen counter. The juice had run under a third tomato and a tired-looking avocado. Every time I've had to clean up tomatoes like this I've angrily thought that she's becoming wasteful and sloppy, but today I wonder if maybe she's having trouble remembering what food she has around. Each week or so she's been buying expensive hothouse tomatoes and avocados like these and leaving them to ripen on 14

the counter, until they become rotten. Without once making a salad. Sometimes, when the tomatoes have begun to develop mold, I've joked to her that they appear to be ripe. She hasn't seemed to get the joke. She's also been buying green beans, cauliflower, and broccoli and leaving them untouched in the crisper in the fridge until they become rubbery and I have to throw them out. I don't even joke to her about these—mostly, I think, because for years she's believed I'm tight with money. I probably am, a little. In the past if I mentioned that a vegetable was rotting in the crisper she'd claim I was nagging at her for having squandered a few pennies. So I would just pitch the thing into the garbage and say nothing, as I did with the tomatoes today. If I say something and get her angry the whole point of my question will be lost in her anger. What boxes we put ourselves in. Then there's been Mike's puzzlement about why it is that she seldom makes her own scalloped potatoes from fresh potatoes, cheese, and onions. A couple of months ago she took to buying mixes of freeze-dried potatoes and powdered cheese, or frozen packages of scalloped potatoes, all of which taste plastic to Mike and me. We asked her gently why she was buying these and she said they looked pretty good. Just like what she said about the cakes. Mike and I took to declining these, too, finding some bread to eat with our dinner instead. He kept praising her own scalloped potatoes whenever he could and volunteered to peel potatoes for her. Now, at least, she seems to have stopped buying the mixes. She even made the real thing Saturday for Mike's birthday—he peeled the potatoes. Well, maybe we're not quite in a box. Perhaps she's just getting older and eccentric. March 18,1999 Yesterday Mike asked me if I'd noticed that Linda's been reading the same book for the past five weeks. I have. It's an Anne McCaffrey dragonslayer novel, The Masterharper of Pern. But have I noticed that she's been on the same page? Mike had been checking every few days. I didn't know 15

what to make of this. I still don't. Over the past twenty years she has read an average of three or four mostly inconsequential books a week—detective fiction, science fiction, historical romance, fantasy adventure. But maybe she's bored with this one. Maybe she's been interrupted many times. Besides, yesterday she went out and bought three more thick paperbacks to read during her trip to Charleston and Raleigh. She's supposed to be leaving for North Carolina tomorrow with Seizer, our champion Great Dane puppy, for a week of dog shows. It's a long trip, although there's nothing unusual about one of us taking an overnight or long-weekend trip to a dog show. But Linda's being strange about it. Keeps saying she doesn't want to go. That she's getting too old for long drives, that she's been feeling too tired. Although she's not driving alone. She'll be sharing the driving with Judy Taylor, Seizer's dog-show handler. I'm perplexed. Linda's usually been an adventurous and resourceful driver. Sometimes I've wished she were less so. In her early thirties, a few years after we were married, she went on a business trip to Belize for a month, rented a Landrover, and drove over jungle roads from Belize City to Tikal in Guatemala, despite reports of bandits along the route. A few years later, in England, she rented a small Rover sedan and drove for two weeks alone around the downtown of that other London, and then she moved on to the southern cathedral cities—Winchester, Exeter, Bath, Salisbury, Glastonbury—her first experience with right-hand drive. As recently as two years ago she had offered—in exchange for the option of buying a "pick male" puppy—to drive Scott Johnson's Great Dane bitch Carley to Massachusetts or Texas or Ohio to mate with a top stud dog. I'm still not sure why I'm writing all this, or even who I'm writing it for. Maybe Linda? Maybe Mike, Sara? I know I worry that I may forget something. And hope that things'11 look clearer, or make more sense, if I write them down—like they might if I could talk about them. I asked Linda yesterday if she was feeling okay, and she said of course she was, that she was just getting old and felt tired. Then she turned away. Today I drove her to the automobile club travel shop to buy traveler's 16

checks for her trip. Earlier, we had debated whether we would get them at our bank or at the travel shop. As we were driving towards the shop and away from the downtown area, where the bank is located, she asked me how much farther was it to the bank. She seemed confused when I explained that we were not going to the bank and then didn't seem to remember anything about the travel shop. When we got back I described the incident to Mike, telling him that it had made me feel uncannily like I was explaining something to my ninety-year-old mother. But I told him this more as an amusing story than as something I was worried about. Linda has usually been so on top of things that he and I both have enjoyed seeing her slip up. Nevertheless, I'm writing it down. March 19,1999 Linda and Judy have made it to Judy's daughter's place near Charleston. They will borrow the daughter's motorhome for their week in Raleigh. Linda's called, and she seemed okay. I was pretty sure they'd get there. Judy's a strong, resourceful woman, also in her early fifties, who's driven her truck and trailer to dog shows all over the continent. Strong like Linda used to be. But the day didn't begin well. Linda left home this morning at six to pick up Judy at her farm. It's about an hour's drive. She called about two hours later to say she was lost. I told her to phone Judy and get new directions. Around 10:30 she called me from Judy's. She said she had got new directions but had got lost again before finally getting there. But tonight she said their drive south was uneventful. She sounded excited. They'd fed their dogs and were getting ready to have a late supper. March 23,1999 Linda's phone calls from Raleigh have been brief and vague. She says everything's going well. Seizer's eating okay, and he did reasonably well at today's show. Of course she usually says such things—she's never wanted to worry me when she's been traveling. 17

March 25,1999 Linda phones again tonight to say that Seizer has won big. But she doesn't have much else to say, and our conversation peters out. She says she's tired. I feel unhappy, empty. I've been looking forward to talking to her. When we hang up all I seem to have is my worries. She's been tired a lot recently—too tired to talk, explain, discuss. Our last big argument was way back before Christmas. I keep telling myself it's not like her to be quiet, or complacent. One of the things that has tied us together has been our long-running and fiercely engaging disagreements. That last argument concerned her usual conviction that she could do something much belter than I could, and my usual resolve to try to outfox her. We've been playing these games for thirty-one years—about who drives better, writes better, knows the classics better, paints woodwork better. But, like our conversation just now, our last argument petered out. I've been trying to replay it mentally and figure out why.

Our focus was Seizer, who had recently developed a rambunctious tendency to leap with a joyous and playful growl towards any and every dog he encountered. I had been blocking these i5O-pound leaps by catching his throat in the crook of my right elbow. She learned of this behavior, his and mine, when taking him to a dog show in November. He nearly yanked her to the ground. She blamed me for having encouraged it. I was incompetent to supervise the dog, she announced. She would not allow me to take him out "ever again." I remember feeling offended, even panicked. I've enjoyed taking my huge, excitable puppy out. Seizer's next show was more than a month away, his first U.S. show— the four-day Rainbow Classic, February 26 to March i, in Niagara Falls, New York—in which Linda had personally entered him. She was determined that he would have an American championship and earn it well before other champion Canadian puppies of his age, particularly Scott Johnson's puppy, Honey. So, to try to "win" our argument, I conceded that she was probably right, that Seizer was much safer with her than me, 18

and that it had better be she who took him to Niagara Falls. She huffily retorted that of course she would be taking him, that there was no way she would let me do it. As the show approached, however, I began to notice that she had stopped mentioning our argument. I recall suspecting that she was trying to back out of taking him—but without openly admitting that my supervision of him was okay. So I began talking about the show every day as one that she would be taking him to, trying to ensure that she didn't maneuver me into taking him by pretending she'd never said I couldn't. But, to my consternation, it seemed she might not be pretending. "Why am I taking Seizer to this show?" she kept asking. "Why aren't you taking him?" Sometimes the question surprised me by sounding almost plaintive. "Because you wanted to go," I would reply. She would look perplexed, but she'd reluctantly continue making preparations. I feel a little guilty when I remember these scenes now. But she did take the dog to the show, find her way through local Buffalo and Niagara Falls traffic to the show site, and locate the professional handler I had engaged to show for us. Competing against some fifty other Great Danes, Seizer won two "majors" in four shows, being awarded Winners Dog on the third day for four points, and Winners Dog and Best of Winners on the fourth day for three points. The seven points put him almost halfway to the fifteen needed for a U.S. championship. It was a spectacular and enviable debut. She came back full of excitement and stories about having met "famous" American dog handlers and Dane breeders and having seen top-ranked American Great Danes. About Seizer having beaten dogs and bitches from celebrated kennels. The stories made sense to me. At least as I remember. I wish I'd written some of them down. But she doesn't seem at all excited about these shows in Raleigh. March 31,1999 Linda and Seizer are back. She's animated, but definitely not excited. She's angry at Judy, although she also says she pretended not to be and 19

that she enjoyed being with her. She's bitter, feels she's wasted her time. Seizer had only two wins in the seven shows and earned only two points. She thinks Judy did a poor job of showing him and then tried to cover up by blaming the judges. She tells me that on the fourth day, when a judge ranked Seizer last in his class of four, Judy complained to the show officials. Linda's sure that her complaint upset the other judges and caused them to turn against Seizer in the remaining three shows. But when I look closely at Seizer I can see that he's lost about fifteen pounds. He may have been in no shape to win. I ask her general questions about the shows—about who she saw, who she talked to, what any of the Dane breeders there thought of Seizer, but she doesn't seem to have met many. She has trouble with their names, and she has to get out the show catalog and try to match her memories with the names printed there. She keeps saying these were big shows and there were lots of people. That she and Judy parked their motorhome a long way from the show building. That she didn't always get over there.

20

2. journ-1

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April 5,1999 I've called this computer file "Journ-1." I could call it "Linda" or "Lindaprob" or "Lindamem," but I don't want it to be that identifiable. I'm not sure who I'm hiding it from. I know I don't want Linda to see it, although she's so uninterested in things right now she's unlikely even to glance at my laptop screen. I know I need a secluded place to continue thinking about her and to remember what I've been thinking. To explain to myself what I've been thinking. Change is so relative, and what's going on with her is so confusing, obsessing, that I'm finding it hard to measure what may be happening. I worry I'll get trapped in my own anxiety. Yet I still feel guilty about writing. I don't want Mike or Sara to know, either. I've think I've started this because Linda's memory seems even worse. Her friend Cheryl, a Great Dane breeder in Pennsylvania, called last night and talked to her for over an hour, but when I asked Linda what Cheryl had said she didn't seem able to remember. Cheryl was at the Niagara Falls shows during our puppy's big wins, and she's been following his recent showings. She must have been calling to find out about the North Carolina shows. At first I was angry that Linda didn't seem to take my question seriously enough to try to remember. Angry that she hadn't paid attention to Cheryl. But she really seems unable to remember. I don't know what to do. I try to talk to her, to find out whether she's aware that she's forgetting things, but she thinks I'm still angry at her. She gets defensive as if I'm accusing her of forgetting. I guess a few moments ago I

was.

23

April 9,1999 What occurred last week in North Carolina is becoming increasingly mysterious. Linda and I had reason to expect Seizer to do well at those shows. Not only because of his extraordinary debut in Niagara Falls, but also because he's no ordinary dog. Linda's always wanted only the best quality things in life—fine wines, rich food, hand-woven carpets, rare antiques, exotic travel, artistic friends, designer clothes—things as distant from her impoverished east-end Vancouver childhood as she could imagine. It's as if she's grown up certain that she's special and deserves, inspires, or can do special things. Sometimes her self-confidence has bordered on arrogance—well-founded arrogance, of course. Which I've usually loved. She doesn't believe it necessary for her to circulate at parties. Insecure or needy or untalented people have to move about, she once explained to me. Instead, she stands or sits in one place, confident that others will want to come and be with her. And they've come. She personally sought out Seizer at his breeders in Manitoba. Convinced them to sell to us. Seizer's mother was the number three ranking Great Dane in Canada when only a year old, and was she was Reserve Winners Bitch at the U.S. national Dane specialty show in 1997; Seizer's grandfather was the number two ranking Canadian Great Dane for several years, and his uncle—his mother's littermate—was number one in 1997 and 1998 and won the Canadian national Great Dane; specialty show three years in succession. When we got our seven-week-old puppy, Linda immediately began training him. By the time he was one year old he had set four all-time Canadian Great Dane puppy records, including winning Best Puppy in Show on twelve occasions. Linda liked such facts. It was as if they were part of the history of a fine painting. She and I were going to do more extraordinary things with our puppy. And this week she hardly wants to talk about him. Today I was at a dog show, in nearby Chatham where Judy was to show Seizer—his first Canadian showing of the year. When I talked to Judy 24

about the North Carolina shows, she said that Linda had become disoriented every time they had gone driving together to get groceries, and she hadn't seemed to understand much of what was happening when Seizer was competing. Judy confirmed that she had complained orally about one of Seizer's judges, but she added that there had been no backlash from the other judges—that afterwards she had won points several times with dogs of other breeds. Linda had been cheerful company but had slept fifteen or more hours a day. She hadn't shown much interest in the shows overall. Seizer—accustomed to more attention and exercise—had become unhappy and lethargic. Linda hadn't been able to find a situation in which he was comfortable eating, and so he had lost weight. She had confided to Judy that she was having trouble reading, having trouble focusing her eyes, and also having trouble with her balance—things she's never confided to Mike or me. Judy wonders if Linda is ill—or perhaps severely depressed. She says I must persuade her to seek help. I don't know what to think. Judy then took Seizer into the ring and showed him expertly, winning Best among the Great Danes and, later, first place among more than seventy dogs in the Working Group—the biggest win of his career so far. April 10, 1999 Cheryl's called again. Linda was asleep and I noticed Cheryl's number on the call display and picked up. She was wondering why Linda hadn't called her back. Linda'd said she could get information for her about some Canadian shows. I suspected she'd forgotten, but I told Cheryl only that she's been tired since getting back from the States. Cheryl said she was worried about Linda—that when she saw her at the Rainbow shows Linda asked her the same question several times over. She thought it was a mistake for her to take Seizer to North Carolina. I keep recalling what Judy said Linda had told her about her reading and balance difficulties. I wish I could figure out how to get Linda to discuss this with me. Part of my problem is that Linda has been such a strong person for so long that I can't believe these difficulties won't go away. Or 25

that she won't be able to will them away. Another problem is that I can't let on that I talked to Judy about her—she'd be furious. A third problem, I suspect, is that I don't want her difficulties to be real—don't want her to confirm that they are real. Even though if I'm writing about them here I must know that they are. April n, 1999 Seizer has continued to have extraordinary results in Chatham. Judy has shown him to three consecutive Group firsts, accumulating 240 points for him in the national Great Dane standings. Linda is not impressed and is still skeptical about Judy's handling. John and Shirley came over tonight so that John, who is a medical doctor, a GP, could give our dying Great Dane, Soren, his regular acupuncture treatments. Soren is a dog who hates to lose his dignity or composure— a lot like Linda—and he stands stoically during the treatments. We don't know if they do any good, but they seem to make him more lively for the next few days. John does this for nothing. He's interested in learning more about acupuncture, and he's interested in dogs—he has had to research canine acupuncture points before attempting the treatment. It seems strange for us all to be helping Soren with his health problems while Linda's difficulties hang in the air about us, unspoken. At least strange for her, and me, and Mike. April 19,1999 Today is my fifty-ninth birthday. I still feel thirty-ish, and, as usual, I took Seizer out for a twenty-minute run in the park. Except for my gray beard, I believe I don't look fifty-nine—I still have most of my hair, I'm the same waist size and weight I was in my thirties. Seizer's happy to try to run overtop of every squirrel in the park—he couldn't care less how old I am.

Linda roasted a leg of lamb yesterday for my birthday, but she made scalloped potatoes—from scratch, thank goodness—rather than her 26

usual lamb-roasted potatoes. I'm puzzled about this, because roast potatoes are much easier, and she knows I like them equally well. She also didn't stud the lamb with garlic cloves, as she usually does. But it was a good meal, and I made no comment about the menu. Instead of my usual birthday bottle of Saint Emilion, I brought up a 1990 Pauillac from our cellar, which I knew she'd prefer. Sara was here from Toronto, where she designs user interfaces for an industrial software company. Mike and I told her that we're worried about her mom but that we don't know what's wrong. Maybe she's having vision problems and these are preoccupying and depressing her. Mike and I are also concerned about the possibility of Alzheimer's, but we didn't tell Sara this. Probably because we don't want to believe it ourselves. John and Shirley were here again last night for Soren's acupuncture. As usual, we brought up a bottle of wine and shared it after the treatment. I wonder why Linda, who doesn't have a GP in London, hasn't asked John about the odd symptoms she described to Judy. Or about finding another GP she can visit. Midway through their visit she shocked me by stumbling over a few common words when speaking, as if unable to find them. I don't recall her doing this before. But she managed pretty well to conceal the difficulty by confining her speech to exclamations and brief responses to other people's comments—and by saying she was tired. I found myself trying to help her cover—quickly filling in a word when I realized she was looking for it. I don't think John and Shirley noticed that anything is wrong. Not a very happy birthday. April 23, 1999 More bizarre things. Linda's now been having difficulty remembering where she has put things in the kitchen. Having difficulty completing sentences. She sometimes seems unable to remember the names for really common things, like oven mitts or French toast or broccoli. "Can you find that thing for me," she's said to me, impatiently. "You know, that thingl" When these word problems began, or began to increase, a couple of days 27

ago, I would try to find whatever it was and pretend that everything was normal. As if I didn't want her to know I'd noticed her difficulty. But today I'm sure she knows. Just as abruptly as her language has begun faltering, an oddly tacit understanding has emerged between us. Hard to remember how quickly it happened. She knows that I know that she knows that she's in trouble— I can see it every time now in her eyes when she looks at me after losing track of a sentence. I am still covering her mistakes for her, pretending not to notice them, but now not so much to pretend to myself, or to conceal them from both of us, as to spare her embarrassment. She seems to know that too and be grateful. She's also silently acknowledging to Mike that he knows. Without going into any details, yesterday he and I, separately, urged her to see a doctor. Quietly urged. But she shrugged to me despairingly—"It's too difficult," she said. There seemed to be nothing more to say. Instead of diminishing my need to remember things, these changes seem to be making me want to write down even more. It's as if I fear that Linda's increasingly uncompleted sentences are silencing me. As if the less she and I can speak the more I need to write. As if our talking was a part of how I made up and understood and kept my memories. I also wish I'd begun this journal earlier so I had a better record of her symptoms. I've started trying to reconstruct the last few months, going back over our dog-show calendar, through my e-mail records, trying to force them to bring back events and conversations. April 25,1999 John and Shirley were here again tonight. As well as being a doctor, John is a member of the Nihilist Spasm Band, an internationally acclaimed "noise band," most of whose members are southwestern Ontario artists, some of them nationally famous, like Greg Curnoe and John Boyle. Shirley sells real estate and used to be on the school board. The kind of intellectually or creatively alert people Linda loves to be with. We first met John through Greg, our friend and founding band member, at the annual 28

Nihilist picnic, and then we kept meeting him and Shirley at parties and art openings. When Greg was killed in a cycling accident in 1992, John and Shirley helped us clean and prepare our house to receive a hundred or so mourners after the memorial service. They're now our best friends in London. John again gave Soren his acupuncture treatment. Soren shouldn't be dying—he was a magnificent Great Dane puppy, won his Canadian championship at seven months, in only two weekends of showing, and is now only five and a half years old. In Scott Johnson's basement he seemed to pick Linda to be his owner as much as she picked him from a litter of four-week-old puppies. She took him to puppy training classes, to conformation classes and obedience classes, showed him in conformation, coming close in 1997 to winning a Great Dane specialty show—he was the runner-up male—and showed him in obedience competitions, earning a qualifying score in each of his first three trials to win his Companion Dog championship. Danes are not usually good obedience dogs because their attention wanders, but dog people said Soren was special in that he was so attached to Linda he would do anything for her. During his third obedience trial he was attacked—blindsided—by another Dane who bit him so deeply over his left eyebrow that blood ran down into the eye. But he "obediently" went back into the ring a few minutes later and completed his two-minute sit-stay and five-minute down-stay without protest. There's a wonderful photo of him and Linda proudly receiving their huge blueand-white rosette right after. Soren sitting obediently without a leash! His eye not yet having started to swell. Now, like his brindled brother, Sigmund, whom we also owned and who died six months ago, he is dying of dilative cardiomyopathy. One of the reasons Linda now despises Scott. Suddenly, as John was packing away his acupuncture kit, Linda asked him if he could recommend a GP. "I've been having problems remembering things. Remembering words," she said. "There's something wrong with my head," she told them. She tried to smile and make it a joke. "But please don't tell anyone." 29

Linda with her Great Dane, Soren.

April 26,1999 John called early this morning, before nine, to tell Linda he'd arranged for her to see a woman doctor, Kathleen McCully, later today. He must be alarmed. Linda was nervous about getting herself to the doctor's office, got me to draw her a map, but she drove herself there and back successfully. She's always been so aggressively self-sufficient that neither Mike nor I had any thought she shouldn't go alone. Dr. McCully is recommending that she see a neurologist, but the earliest appointment she can arrange is in September. She's going to keep trying for something sooner. When Linda tells me this we both shrug, hoping that our fears have been unnecessary, that there's no urgency.

30

April 27,1999 Over the mantel in our back parlor—our TV room and "dog room"— hangs a large, brooding watercolor self-portrait by Greg Curnoe. It's been there since the week before his death in November 1992. It was one of the last things he painted, and Linda bought it directly from his easel. Another of her splendid acquisitions. Beside it hangs one of his trademark "lettered" paintings, which Sheila, his widow, gave us a couple of years later for my having edited the two books Greg had left unfinished. And on the other side another painting, a color wheel, which Sheila traded to us a year later for a small Greg watercolor I had bought at an auction. We used to entertain a lot of friends in this room. Lately there have only been John and Shirley and dying Soren. A year ago Sheila was here almost every week with her Great Dane puppy, Boomer, who is the same age as Seizer. Sheila brought Boomer to training classes with us and showed him briefly in the same shows as Seizer. She was enormously proud of Boomer, an eager, chunky dog—a full brother to Scott's Honey. Like many of Scott's dogs, including Soren, he has very little black mask on his face. One Saturday last August Sheila brought him to the Markham show with a beautiful dark mask painted up to his eyes. Some of the competing exhibitors, who had seen him maskless the day before, muttered to me that they were considering filing a protest with the kennel club. Linda phoned Sheila to warn her and has been shunned by Sheila since. I didn't hear Linda make that phone call, and I wonder now whether she was less diplomatic than she would have been at other times. She has been different. Sheila would have noticed the changes too if she were still visiting. A few months later Boomer twice inexplicably attacked and nearly killed another of Sheila's dogs, a gentle rescue greyhound. Now she's sent him away, but we're not supposed to know. He lives, we're told, locked in a basement in Orangeville. We seem a little locked up here too. I miss Greg even after seven years. Used to talk to him every week. And after his death talked to him in other ways—in his studio with Linda for 3i

several hours every Sunday, helping Sheila locate and catalog the thousands of paintings and collages he had left. April 28,1999 I send an e-mail to Sara in Toronto: "Your mom met with her new doctor Monday, and she has another appointment next week, plus one with a neurologist in September. She wasn't good today—she was trying to ask me what I wanted with the game hens she was cooking, but she couldn't remember the words for either rice or fries and finally asked me what I wanted for dessert. I said 'rice,' knowing what she was really trying to ask, which turned out to be one of the right answers. Later, she called me to watch the game hens, which she had put on the table—she wanted me to keep them safe from the dogs—and she couldn't remember what they were called, finally calling them 'fries.' She also had a lot of problems programming the VCR. It's all very worrying. I'm leaving tomorrow at 6 A.M. for a dog show in Wilmington, Delaware. I've no idea how she will make out while I'm away, or if she'll remember to give Soren his pills, or remember she has dogs to let out in the night. She's also very depressed by her problems—I saw her staring into the mirror at herself a few minutes

ago." April 29,1999 After a ten-hour drive, I'm with Seizer at a state park near Wilmington. It's warm and the trees are in leaf and blossom. I have a campsite on a ring road directly behind some trees that overlook the show ring. Seizer seems to love the park and the warm weather. The drive down was lonely—too much time for thought, especially once I got off the 1-90 at Syracuse and onto the less traveled I-8i towards Binghamton and the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I've never traveled this route. As soon as I arrive I get out my cell phone and call Vicki Marchand, the handler I've engaged, who lives nearby, and let her laiow Seizer and I are here. Then I call Linda to report our safe arrival and discover that 32

Linda with her English springer spaniel, Mac, 1950.

Dr. McCully has called with the news that she can see a different neurologist tomorrow, at University Hospital. She won't have to wait until September. The doctor has an unexpected vacancy in his schedule because he is retiring soon and is sending some patients on to other doctors. This is good fortune, she says, speaking in short, careful sentences. Under the current right-wing Ontario government a five-month wait for a neurologist is normal. With Seizer fed and my campsite all set up, I sit at my laptop computer at the picnic table. There are dogs at every campsite, dogs of various breeds being walked down the roadway. I start reminiscing, thinking about Linda and about how she started all this—going to dog shows. I wouldn't go with her to our first puppies' conformation training class, so she got Sheila to go and help train Siggie. In a short time—four years— we had four Danes, four champions. Now we just have Seizer, old Soren, 33

and Stevie, who is two months younger than Seizer, brindled, feisty, small, and underweight. And a blue urn at one end of the fireplace. Our first two were Soren and Siggie. Sigmund. Sigmund Dog. They were my first dogs ever. Linda had had a springer spaniel—her "Mackie dog"—for almost twenty years during her childhood and adolescence. Our house had been broken into three times—each time while we were home—since we had moved to London, and Linda and I were sitting around wondering what to do. We didn't want a burglar alarm—the house was too large and old, and Mike often came home from parties at 3 or 4 A.M. "We should get a dog," I said. Linda had leapt: up at once, with her characteristic exuberance. One of the many things I love her for. She exclaimed that she'd always wanted a dog, had never thought I would tolerate one, and rushed off to begin research. She came back excitedly from the library with several books, including one called The Right Dog for You, which offered a quiz that told us we needed either a standard poodle or a Great Dane. She didn't think she liked poodles, and so she phoned the Canadian Kennel Club to ask about local Dane breeders. A chain of phone calls led her to Scott Johnson. She wanted not just any dog, but a remarkable one. Linda got Sheila to go with her to look at Scott's litter, where she found little Soren, the dominant puppy, a chubby fawn, who stormed out of the litter box to meet her. I went with them the next weekend, and I noticed Sigmund, a shy brindle who kept to himself. These, of course, were not yet their names. But the two puppies were "show quality," Scott explained, unlike the rest of the litter. He would sell only a half ownership in them— for the same price as a pet. We agreed to buy the chubby fawn. Scott then said he would give us a reduction if we would take the brindle as well. We went home and thought about the puppies being companions for each other. We called Scott later that week to say we'd take the two. It's a bit bizarre to be remembering this story. It used to be one of Linda's stories—one she told people to demonstrate how much the dogs were hers and not mine. Or to demonstrate how much ][ had misled her 34

into believing I couldn't like dogs. Or how instrumentally I had once viewed dogs—as an alternative to a burglar alarm! I don't think she could tell such a story right now. Then Linda and Sheila began taking the two dogs to conformation training classes. At first Scott "handled" the puppies in the show ring. At seven months Soren won his Canadian championship, in two weekends. At ten months he was near death from immune-mediated polyarthritis— due to a susceptibility that was probably inherited. Sigmund, still lanky, finished his championship that month. I began showing him occasionally myself later that year. With intensive treatment, Soren came back from the dead with badly damaged joints. He never ran up a flight of stairs again, but he walked them methodically, solemnly. When Sigmund was two he and I began winning. For fun I gave him to a professional handler to show, an influential old-time Dane breeder, Dora Ann Collins. At three, after six or seven weekends of showing, he was the number six Dane in Canada, and Scott's kennel, Standbyme, was becoming locally famous. At four Sigmund was number two, but I'd also discovered that he had microscopic hereditary cataracts and should never be bred. In January, at his annual checkup, his heart seemed fine but his thyroid seemed weak. At four and a half he was the number one ranked Canadian Dane and winning big at almost every show in which he was entered. That June he collapsed beside an outdoor show ring with dilative cardiomyopathy, and ten weeks later he was dead. Linda immediately had her beloved Soren's heart checked with ultrasound. It too was weakening. We've been slowing his decline with medication ever since. We also could have done that for Sigmund. A third littermate, Riley, had died a year earlier from cardiomyopathy, but Scott hadn't told us. Linda is still bitter. I'm unhappy also, in part because I can remember Scott in the summer of 1997 wanting to breed Sigmund after we knew about his cataracts and while the third brother was, unknown to us, dying. Worse, Scott had offered to replace that third brother, but, despite the ten thousand dollars 35

Seizer and Honey in competition.

plus that we spent on ensuring Siggie's show success, hasn't offered to replace him. At the very least, he should have offered us Honey, his new show puppy, but Linda was too proud to suggest it to him. She's also not sure Honey's good enough—she has a large head that looks like it should be a male's head, short legs, a slight sag in the line of her backbone, and an odd gait that makes her look like she's running downhill when in a level show ring. And because of some sickness Scott told us about among her littermates—a heart murmur, a case of megaesophagus, some badly deformed tails—Linda's also suspicious about her health prospects. She's not sure Scott could ever breed a puppy good enough. Nevertheless, he owes us.

April 30,1999 Vicki Marchand came over to my campsite early, around 8 A.M. She had hadn't seen Seizer before and had little idea what sort of dog she had was agreed to show—just that he'd been a big winner in Canada—but she was

visibly relieved and impressed by his strength and elegance. She told me States that he had a lot of characteristics that Danes in this area of the States 36 36

needed and could well win points every time out. She's a tall, lean, somewhat severe woman, about forty I'd guess, and she's very comfortable around dogs. There's not a huge Dane entry, but there are several nationally known exhibitors here whose heads turn when I bring Seizer to ringside. He wins his class over a very nice brindle from a well-known kennel. Vicky handles him aggressively, making him stand at his full height, leaning forward, his neck arched. She's definitely as good as the people who recommended her said she was. When he wins Winners Dog many of the other exhibitors respond with applause—something competitors never do in Canada. And again, when he wins Best of Winners. Linda's going to feel good about this, I think. Afterward several of them come up and introduce themselves and ask questions about Seizer—where he's from, what other dogs have been bred by his kennel. Two of them saw his mother when she won Reserve Winners at the U.S. nationals. I delay calling Linda until the afternoon, when she'll be back from the neurologist. Mike answers— she's been away for almost five hours and is not yet back. I call again in the evening and ask her what she found out. She says that they don't know anything for sure, that she had a lot of tests and has to await the results, and that she needs more tests later. I sit down and try to do some work on my laptop. I write this journal entry and then try to work on a poem I am supposed to send to the magazine Rampike. I have trouble with that, and so I work a little at editing two papers I am to present in a few weeks at a gathering of Canadian university teachers in Sherbrooke, Quebec. May 3,1999 I got back from southern Pennsylvania around seven last night. Linda was waiting with dinner for me. I told her about Seizer winning Best of Winners at the first and second shows and about my disappointment at the third, where the judge was a Canadian, one of the judges who had given Seizer a Group first at Chatham only two months ago. Here he'd 37

appeared hardly to notice Seizer. Linda commented solemnly that he was probably trying to please his American hosts. I didn't ask her much about her visit to the neurologist since we'd already talked about it on the phone and about her needing more tests. She seemed subdued, but then with her language difficulties she can't speak very much anyway. She wanted to hear my stories about the shows and about how much the other exhibitors down there liked Seizer. I was tired from the nine-hour drive, happy to chat and then have an early night. This morning I get up as usual, have a shower, let the dogs outside one at a time, retrieve the morning paper, make coffee, and heat the oven to bake myself a frozen baguette. Linda surprises me by joining me shortly after the coffee is ready. She sits down with me at the d:ining room table. Most mornings when she comes down she says "Hi" and takes her coffee and a section of the paper back upstairs to her room. Today she says abruptly that she hasn't yet told me everything about: her visit to the neurologist. There was a diagnosis. "You need to know," she says. I'm still adjusting to the fact that it's early in the morning and we are talking. "I have an inoperable brain tumor," she says. "I may have less than a year to live." She speaks all this very matter-of-factly, as if what she's most aware of is the need to tell me as directly and precisely as possible. She has to go back to the hospital for a biopsy on Thursday—has to check in Wednesday night. "You need to know," she repeats. "The day after tomorrow." She hadn't wanted me to worry about her while I was away. I reach out to touch her. "Don't," she says. All of this conversation seems both surreal and reasonable. Except that she and I are inside it. Exact speech is a struggle for her. It is all she can do to control denotation. Or so I think as I stammer "That's awful!" She doesn't mean to be surreal. She may be dying. It occurs to me that I've hardly said anything. She is now quiet. What else can she say? Mike comes down. Linda begins recounting what happened to her on Friday. She'd set out still determined to look after herself and her problem. She drove herself to University Hospital in north London, to the 38

neurologist's office. After examining her and checking her symptoms, the neurologist at once sent her for X-rays to Victoria Hospital in south London. From there she was sent back to University Hospital for an MRI. Although at opposite ends of the city, the two hospitals, I recall, were amalgamated by Mike Harris's Conservative government a couple of years ago for economic reasons, and "duplicate" services were eliminated. Back at University Hospital several other doctors looked at Linda. Five or six hours had passed. They told her, rather reluctantly—she is evidently still fairly good at cross-examination—that she has a tumor deep in her thalamus, inoperable because of its remote location, most likely an "astrocytoma." It's causing her weakness on the right side of her body, interfering with her language center, and severely restricting the peripheral vision in her right eye. They were amazed to discover that she'd been driving herself between the two hospitals all afternoon. They recommended that she call someone to take her home. She faked a call to Mike and then evaded the orderly they had assigned to watch over her by telling him she was being picked up in the faculty parking lot. There she jumped into her car and drove away. The orderly probably didn't realize that her car has my faculty parking pass—that she hadn't parked in the cash lot for hospital patients. It was the last time she would drive. I heat some milk and make myself another mock cappuccino. Linda sits glumly and says I'm not to tell anyone. "Not even John and Shirley," I ask? "No, they're okay," she says, "but I don't want Sheila to know. And I don't want my mother to know, or Scott. So don't tell your friends in Vancouver, or dog-show people. No one." She hasn't told Sara either, although Sara's been phoning every day. Linda wonders why she's been phoning and suspects that Mike may have told her something. I doubt he has. One of my closest friends since the late 19505 has been George Bowering, writer, novelist, poet. When I finally get myself upstairs to my e-mail there's a note waiting for me from him, about his wife and our friend, Angela, who has been battling cervical cancer for the past two years. One of his weekly notes. Angela had a major operation early in 1998, 39

with a colostomy, a colonostomy, and substantial removal of other tissue, and she seemed to be doing okay—although she was mostly bedridden— until last fall. A long period of intermittent hospitalization followed, some plastic surgery, hopeful diagnoses, more problems, and then exploratory surgery this spring, which revealed that the cancer had spread and was untreatable. I saw her last September, before the new crisis. She still seemed young, witty, vivacious, as she was in 1961, when George and I were defiant young poets together in grad school. She said she was doing more reading than she'd ever done before in her life, and reading for pleasure. She'd been an English prof at a community college, and like most of us profs she was unused to having time to read for pleasure. I'd just arrived by plane from Toronto, and George had left a message for me to meet him and a bunch of other writers at a downtown bar. Instead I sat for three hours at the foot of Angela's bed. They don't know "how long she has," George writes. He and Ange are "practicing a kind of mutually unstated denial." She takes leritine when the pain gets bad. While he marks papers and edits his current book. I have trouble replying. I feel like a hypocrite writing to him without mentioning Linda. Instead I write to Sara. "Better phone your mother again tonight," I write. "She has something she needs to tell you." I notice that I have unconsciously echoed Linda's "You need to know." Then I write this entry, including all of the things I wish I could tell someone like George. May 4,1999 It's been a quiet day. Neither Mike nor I say much to Linda about her illness, and she doesn't seem to want to talk. She got up, played mah-jongg, cooked supper, almost as usual. She got Mike to take her shopping. She's spending quite a bit of time trying to write a speech she's supposed to give at the annual Partners in Research banquet next Sunday night. Someone on the executive phoned her last weekend to ask her to speak on behalf of the founding patrons. That's what some of the faxes must have been about. 40

I can't believe she's planning to do it. And with her biopsy scheduled for Thursday. But she's taking the speech seriously—her fellow patrons include people like Pierre Berton and Margaret Atwood. And she's passionate about the cause—the continued use of animals in medical research. But she's having trouble with every sentence. I've helped her increase the font size so it's easier for her to see the screen. I offer to type for her too, but she says, no, that she wants to do it. She seems annoyed that I've offered. She says that it's going to be a popular speech—very short. The few sentences she's completed are cliched, terse, pedestrian. May 5,1999 Linda and Mike have been telling me a little more about tomorrow's biopsy. She says the doctors who first examined her explained that without one, and some identification of the type of tumor, they can offer no treatment. The biopsy, however, comes with a one in a hundred chance of death, a ten in a hundred chance of visual impairment, and a thirty in a hundred chance of some brain damage. I'm impressed that she's remembered this. To do the biopsy, the surgeon drills into her skull and passes a needle through an inch or more of her brain before reaching the tumor, deep in her thalamus. In most cases the procedure requires only one night in hospital. The patient goes in late one afternoon, is operated on the next morning, and goes home—if all's gone well—that afternoon. This afternoon Mike and I took Linda to the hospital, bringing some food and cola with us to leave in the fridge on her floor. Sara arrives by bus from Toronto this evening. I pick her up and we drive back to the hospital. Mike has stayed with Linda. The two of them are sitting in the sunlight on a bench at the hospital entrance, surrounded by flower beds. She is wearing a purple and red "Montreal" T-shirt, which Greg Curnoe bought for her. We go up in the elevator to her seventh-floor room. It feels as if we have gathered to say goodbye to her just in case, although none of us want to let her know that. There is an elderly woman in the aftermath of a severe stroke in the bed opposite. Because of the same provincial 4i

hospital cutbacks that two weeks ago made it likely that Linda would have to wait five months to see a neurologist, we have been unable to get her the private room our medical plan provides. There is a middle-aged woman, a civil servant, about to be released after suffering a mild stroke, in the next bed. She is on the telephone most of the time, telling people how surprised she is by what has happened to her. Linda is amazingly cheerful, as if she feels as much responsible for allaying our fears as we feel for allaying hers. May 6,1999 Michael and I, and Sara in Toronto, have been ransacking the Internet for information on brain tumors—on types of tumor, kinds of treatment, rates of growth, life expectancies. I've been learning new words—"glioma," "glioblastoma," "astrocytoma," "oligodendroglioma," "ependymoma"— so that I can understand what the doctors may say to us, I am learning the differences between types of brain tissue—astrocytes, which form the connective tissue; oligodendrocytes, which form the fatty covering of nerve cells; ependymal cells, which line the ventricles. All these cells can go bad, with their cells transforming into tumors. But the tumors can be high grade—fast-growing—or low grade—slow-growing—or something in between. Older people usually have fast-growing ones. The most common tumors in older people are astrocytomas. At noon today we get a call from the hospital. Linda's biopsy has gone routinely, and she is in the recovery ward. We can bring her home late this afternoon. May 7,1999 There is a three-day dog show this weekend just outside London. I don't remember much about how Seizer did today, except he didn't win. "How's Linda?" is the first thing Judy asks me. She loaows from what she saw when Linda and she traveled to North Carolina that if Linda's problem isn't depression it is extremely serious. It's my first test of not 42

telling anyone. But a lie is going to be a lot more complicated than the truth. I tell Judy about the tumor and how Linda's deeply embarrassed by it and doesn't want it generally known. Judy is shocked. She talks about their trip. I realize that, oddly, she came to be fond of Linda when they were away together, although Linda, I'm sure, was unaware of this, and in her confusion and disappointment she had very different feelings about Judy. I find this upsetting, find myself wanting to protect Judy from Linda's—it's hard to find words for it—paranoia? lack of trust? grumpiness? She says that of course she won't tell anyone. I'm quite sure she won't. A few minutes later I meet Dora Ann, Seizer's other handler in 1998. I hope Judy's not watching—they had a disagreement last summer over a client, and to say they're unhappy with each other would be an understatement. "How's Linda?" Dora Ann asks after we've chatted briefly. I like Dora Ann a lot. She's a retired high school teacher, bright, gregarious, and hospitable, and like Judy she has always been honest with me. "She's not well," I say. "We're still waiting for tests. But she doesn't want it generally known. Please don't tell anyone." I meet a few other dog-show people we know more casually, mostly Dane owners. "Oh, Linda's fine," I say. When Seizer and I get home Linda's working again on her Partner's speech. She now has two short, almost-completed paragraphs. May 8,1999 At the dog show today Peggy Clark, from Michigan, who's had a good kennel of Danes for a number of years and who's usually had Judy handle them, comes over to ask what shows Seizer is going to. Linda is very fond of Peggy—they often sit together at the Dane specialty-show dinners. Peggy is one of the most generous competitors we know—almost as happy when your dog unexpectedly wins as when her own does. She says she hopes she and I can share Judy's handling services this year. That Judy had mentioned a few weeks ago that Linda was ill and that we might not be showing Seizer as much as we had planned. I ask what she's thought Linda might have. "Alzheimer's," she says. "Judy and I were talking about 43

it because my husband has a type of Alzheimer's. Judy was quite worried about Linda." I tell her that it's not Alzheimer's, but it may be something just as bad. Something Linda doesn't want me to talk about. Tonight I finally write back to George, saying that maybe "denial" is just a way of letting himself experience moments when Angela's illness is temporarily overshadowed by better things. I know that there can be such moments, but I can't tell him that. May 10,1999 Well, we got through last night's Partners banquet. It's a huge affair now, over a thousand people in the Westin Hotel banquet room. You get assigned a table with six other people you don't know—the planners try to mix people from different backgrounds. You don't spend much time with close friends. Linda was fairly quiet and talked mainly about our dogs. She'd managed to comb her hair over the small shaved spot where the biopsy needle had been inserted. When it came time for her to give her speech, she walked carefully to the podium. She read her speech mechanically, as if it was a piece of ritual. "I bring you greetings from the Partners ..." If anyone thought she seemed strange, they probably thought she'd had too much to drink and was trying hard to appear sober. When we came home she went straight back to her computer and began playing mah-jongg. May n, 1999

I'm finding it really hard without the old Linda. Miss being able to talk about things with her, joke, reminisce, or plan. Or reminisce in order to plan. I wish she could help me understand what has happened to her. But all she wants to do is watch her television or her computer. If she talks it's only about the present moment, her present moment. Mike and I keep talking about what we could have done differently. Could Linda have had a quicker diagnosis? If not for us? We don't seem to conclude much. Maybe we were both too wrapped up in the drama of 44

her identity to be sure it was changing. Too implicated in imagining and responding to who she was. I'm starting to think now that one huge problem we had in interpreting Linda's behavior over the past five months was that it was both consistent and inconsistent with the person we thought we knew. Neither Mike, Sara, nor I have ever been able to get enough of Linda, enough time with her—enough of her grace, kindness, intelligence, enthusiasm, her gourmet view of what the world has to offer. That enthusiastic Linda would be there and then suddenly switch off. Sometimes I thought it was the insatiability of my delight in her that caused her to switch off. At other times I wondered whether my delight was insatiable because she so often switched off. Hard to know. She would say she needed time to herself. Would pick up a book and look away. Or go to her room. I don't know what Mike and Sara thought when she did this. I thought yeah, that's reasonable, people need time to themselves, but I'd still miss her and empathize with our children, looking at her bedroom door and wanting her. Sometimes I wonder if that's why Mike still hangs around. Who is Linda? How far back does one go in imagining her? The Linda we thought we knew had for the past thirty years displayed intense bursts of energy interspersed with equally intense periods of passivity, relative inactivity, seeming depression. The periods of energy could last for months, even years, as could the periods of inaction. During one period of energy she went to law school, graduated, completed the bar admission course, and began a law career. During another she journeyed to Belize; collected and cataloged the remaining papers of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts; interviewed his widow, Joan; journeyed alone to the Mayan ruins of Uxmal, Chichen Iza, Palenque, Sayil, Labna, Tikal, and Altun Ha; returned and sold the Roberts papers to Queen's University. Yet her life has also had periods marked by numerous unfinished projects. In our basement are the cut-out pieces of five maternity dresses, still pinned to their paper patterns, that she began sometime in 1970-71. In her study are the Apple II diskette files of a Harlequin romance that she 45

began writing in 1983 and abandoned when it was, in her words, ninetypercent finished. In our small solarium are the remains of around fifty orchid plants she acquired in 1991 and tended obsessively for half a year before abandoning them, without a word, to the casual care of Mike and myself. Half of them were dead before Mike and I realized that their care was our responsibility. She did a similar thing with about two hundred house plants in 1978-79—first collecting them, caring for them diligently, having me install special timer-controlled lighting for them and then abandoning them without asking anyone else even to water them. Even her six-week trip to Belize—undertaken precipitously when our children were four and five years of age—and her law studies, which she began shortly after returning, had been part of her abrupt ending of something else—four years of almost claustrophobic domesticity in which she had spent virtually every day caring for and teaching our children, sewing, cooking, and shopping. Yet even though I sometimes joked to her that the main difference between us was that I compulsively finish things, I hadn't found these abrupt shifts in her interests extraordinarily strange. There had been numerous things she'd completed. And lots of people have enthusiasms that experience or the boredom of routine cause to wane. I too have had to struggle to fulfill commitments and long-term projects. Usually I've managed to find something new to do within a long-term project—a new kind of poem, a new focus for my academic articles, new contributors for the journal I edit. But with Linda the problem was slightly different. It was as if in each new enthusiasm she glimpsed some wonderful, Utopian possibility, some amazing happiness. Perhaps even the mythic romance, I've sometimes thought, of her father's ancestry. A happiness that would then prove illusory, ordinary, disappointing. She would retreat, regroup, and dream again. In 1980 Linda had started out as a lawyer, working independently with a group of other independent practitioners, first in an office in the Thompson Building on Bay Street, then in an office in the south tower of 46

the Eaton Center. She was excited about social-justice issues, about creating new areas in art law, about designing new instruments in corporate and commercial law. She said Queen and Bay in Toronto was the most interesting place to practice law in all of Canada. But the rents were high. The restaurants were pricey. And she did not believe it ethical for lawyers to work long hours. She began her business on the basis of a line of credit that was tied to the mortgage on our house. By 1989 this mortgage had grown from around $90,000 to $180,000, and the house had appreciated from $120,000 to $800,000. In 1990 we sold the Toronto house and moved to the small Ontario city of London, banking approximately $400,000 in the exchange of real estate. She commuted between London and Toronto, continuing her Toronto practice and living in a small apartment with our daughter, who was attending the University of Toronto. When, in 1994, Linda decided to terminate her law practice and live full time in London, the $400,000 was gone and there was a small mortgage on our London house. Although she had not shopped regularly for groceries or cooked even half our dinners since 1975, she abruptly took these tasks back from me. She began avidly collecting fine wines for our old age—buying Bordeaux futures and cases of California cabs, Tuscan reds, and Rhone reds from the LCBO's Vintages releases. She still wanted to have a part of the best. She had me build a temperature-controlled wine cellar in our basement. She helped me shovel soil and broken concrete to convert an abandoned staircase we found there. She designed shelving for approximately one thousand bottles and supervised Mike and me as we cut and installed it. I think that when Linda was focused on her law cases she was a very good lawyer. Her specialty became civil litigation. She used to boast that she had never lost a case in court. She said that in court she felt as if she were performing on a stage. She was an excellent performer. But after the first couple of years she was seldom enthusiastic about leaving for work in the morning. In the mid-igSos she began sleeping in and leaving for the office around 10 A.M. She would come back between four and five, usually 47

with a story of a leisurely lunch she had enjoyed with a client or colleague. She would go to bed almost at once and watch TV until I called her down for supper. Many days—sometimes for weeks in a row—she wanted her supper brought up to her. After supper she would watch more TV. If she had work to do she would do it in frantic bursts on our computer, either late at night or before going to work in the morning. She began telling me that other lawyers, especially the men, worked too hard; that they had no interests outside of their work; that they made things difficult for lawyers who wanted more from life; that big law firms got most of the interesting cases; that she didn't like being a lawyer. In 1988-891 took our children to France for my sabbatical year, spending the summer in Paris and the fall and winter near Nice, in Villefranchesur-Mer. After some hesitation Linda arranged to join us for all of September. She later came back for Christmas and then for all of May and June, during which time she and I and Sara traveled! happily through Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Turkey. Mike had become tired of Europe quickly, and he'd rejoined his mother that January and begun looking for work. We all thought she was working especially hard in Toronto to make up for her absences. Instead, he discovered, she was sleeping in late, avoiding answering her phone, not returning messages, and spending few hours at her office. She told him not to answer her phone when she was out because she didn't want certain clients to know anyone was there. He missed several calls from possible employers. He tried to tell me about this when we were all back together in Toronto in July, but I forgot, or I didn't want to hear. He reminded me again last week. May 12, 1999

Last night we got a call from a woman at the Community Care Access Center. She said she tried to speak to Linda at the hospital, but she'd arrived at her room after her release. We'd never heard of such a center, but I'm slowly figuring out that it's a creation of the Conservative provincial government, a creation that has partly replaced the Ministry of Health 48

and that coordinates various privatized services such as home care and prescription drug plans. Having just been in hospital, Linda qualifies for its services for a three-month period. The person who phoned called herself Linda's caseworker. Her name is Pat Cartwright. She visited this afternoon and saw that Linda was having difficulty walking without veering right, difficulty speaking, and trouble reading the pamphlets and release forms she gave her. For three months Linda can have a drug card—the province will pay for her prescriptions. Pat Cartwright is mostly concerned, however, about Linda's ability to get around the house and care for herself. Can she get in and out of the shower or bathtub? Can she cook or bake without risking injury to herself? She will send an occupational therapist to see her and to survey our house for safety. May 13,1999 Linda hates her neurosurgeon. She has said over and over how rough he was with her, brutally clamping the frame to her head that was to guide his surgery. She had asked him to tell her when it would hurt and he didn't and, taken by surprise by the pain, she had broken into tears. But, even before we meet with him, I feel positively about him. He has done the biopsy with apparent skill and without causing any of the feared side effects. We are to see him this morning at Victoria Hospital. His office turns out to be part of the pediatric ward. Is this another sign of stresses on the health system? The waiting room is filled with small children, small chairs, toys, and anxious parents. Our appointment is for 9:15. It seems, however, that everyone's appointment is for 9:15. We sit until almost eleven. Linda is not amused by the wait. She is not amused by the children, who are themselves bored and anxious. She has never been a person to tolerate inefficiency or rudeness, and she is less tolerant today. I am thinking only that we are lucky to be having reasonably prompt attention— that we might have had to wait until September to even begin working towards a diagnosis. Linda does not want to hear this. 49

When we are finally called to see Dr. Megyesi, he gives her a questionnaire to fill out concerning her medical history, present symptoms, and expectations for treatment. She responds with incoherent rage and indignation. She can barely read, can write or print only illegibly, and would have difficulty formulating answers even if she could read the questions. Dr. Megyesi doesn't seem to comprehend her difficulties. He soon finds himself having to read the questions aloud to her. She angrily scrawls answers, deliberately exaggerating their necessary illegibility. Dr. Megyesi retains his polite good humor and keeps her at the task—creating a surreal scene of seeming miscommunication, which makes Linda even more angry. He then displays for us the images from her MRI scan. Even my untrained eye can immediately see an egg-shaped and egg-sized object near the middle of the brain, just below the left ventricle, protruding up and distorting the right. He tells us, however, that he has good news—although he allows, with a smile that "good" is a relative term. Linda appears to have an oligodendroglioma, a somewhat rare tumor that is slow growing. She may have had it for fifteen years. He cautions, though, that hers is a very large tumor, and that his biopsy has only sampled a small portion of it. But the pathology report indicates at least that the sample is definitive—also good news, he observes, smiling at her: sometimes the results are inconclusive and there is need of a second biopsy. But he keeps lapsing into addressing me rather than speaking to Linda. "She probably has eighteen months or more to live, and possibly five years with successful treatment," he says. He then proceeds, as if reciting a script, to outline what brain tumors are, point by point, and what treatments are possible. Linda is offended by his condescending manner. Knowing from the Internet most of what he is saying, I keep interrupting him, making him speak more specifically about Linda's case. But, in the end, we are faced with fairly simple choices: let the tumor run its course or accept treatment. Treatment is usually radiation followed, if and when the tumor becomes active again, by chemo50

therapy. Eventually the body is unable to tolerate chemotherapy, or the chemotherapy drugs become ineffective. There is also a trial being done of a promising treatment in which chemotherapy is used to weaken a tumor that is then attacked with radiation. It is a debilitating treatment for many patients, but it could be effective. Linda decides to apply to the trial and, failing acceptance, to undergo conventional radiation treatment. At noon tomorrow I have to leave for southern Pennsylvania—there's a specialty show for Great Danes in Leola and two all-breed shows, one near Chester and the other near Lancaster. I don't "have" to go, but I entered these shows some months ago and arranged for Vicki Marchand to handle for me again. And Linda wants me to go because she still wants Seizer to get his championship. Wants to "see" him get it. He needs only three points. I'm hoping to get some more writing done—that poem I promised Rampike and the papers I'm supposed to present at Sherbrooke. Haven't been able to get myself to do any writing at home except e-mails and this journal. May 14, 1999

I realize I've been looking forward to this trip, down the same route through central New York and Pennsylvania that I took to Delaware. Searching for PBS stations on my van's radio. Driving through miles of what seem like wooded, lightly populated hills, down past Binghamton and Scranton to the Poconos. Leola, the site of the Central Pennsylvania Dane specialty, turns out to be a small town. One street with a hardware store at one end and an ice cream stand, where I buy a raspberry cone, at the other. The show is to be held the next morning in a community center that is part of a shabby strip mall on the north side of the road. It's 4 P.M. and I'm the first one here. Behind the mall is a decaying parking lot with trees growing through the edge of the pavement. I park at the near end under the trees. Two women exhibitors in motorhomes arrive about an hour later and park nearby. One is an elderly woman who has been breeding Danes for several decades; the other is a professional handler. They 5i

know each other well, and the handler remembers Seizer from one of the shows last month. The breeder has brought a large spaghetti and meatball dinner, and they invite me to eat with them. We talk about dogs and pedigrees and there are no questions about Linda. The young show secretary and her husband drive through the parking lot in their red Firebird just before dark. We are in the right place. May 15,1999 This morning various vans and minivans began arriving shortly after seven. When I get up, at eight, to walk Seizer and make coffee, about twenty have parked nearby. Around 8:30 Cheryl pulls in and parks next to me. It's going to be warm and sunny, so we spread a large blue tarp between our vans to create more shade. "How's Linda?" she soon asks. I decide on a partial truth. "Not too well," I say, "but I expect she'll soon be better." "What's wrong?" "We're not sure, she's still having tests, but I think it could be chronic. She's probably going to have to slow down." I like Cheryl—she's short, ebullient, confident, but realistic about her dogs and about the general unreliability and likelihood of favoritism in dog judging. She wants to have a closer look at Seizer. She wonders about his temperament—is he aggressive? When she saw him in Buffalo Linda was having trouble controlling him, she says. I get Seizer out of his crate and he wags his tail and licks her face. Cheryl is good company. With Vicky again handling him Seizer wins his class, and he's one of only three dogs the judge looks at for Winners Dog. But the judge knows the other two are owned by local people—one of them an overconfident man who always wears a red tam so judges will remember him—from well-known Pennsylvania kennels. "Those two go back a long ways," says Cheryl, meaning the judge and red tam, as she predicts the outcome. Sure enough, the other two dogs get the rosettes. She says, "You should feel pretty good to have gotten that far—they were going to win anyway, you know!" I don't feel good, but I can't tell her why—can't tell her that unless Seizer gets points the whole trip will seem like a useless abandoning of Linda. 52

Tonight I'm back at the show grounds I was at last month. Cheryl's gone home. There are about fifteen hundred dogs being shown here, including about fifty Great Danes. After I write in this journal I tinker with my Sherbrooke paper on the globalization of literary publishing. I need to get it done. When I was at national meetings this February I had aggressively pushed for the inclusion of literary people like myself in this symposium on globalization, with the result that I now seem to be its token poet. I'm going to have to deliver. May 17,1999 Got back home late last night. Was packed and ready to leave as soon as Seizer lost in the ring. But he didn't lose. The judge gave Seizer his class, then Winners Dog, and then Best of Winners, allowing him to beat out around forty dogs and bitches. It was a two-point win, would have been three if there hadn't been absentees. Seizer was left needing one point for his championship. I delayed leaving to say goodbye to the exhibitors I've come to know, and to Vicky. It's unlikely I'll be back to this part of the U.S. soon, unless Seizer doesn't get his point at one of the upcoming Michigan shows. I decided to tell Vicky about Linda. Vicky would like to show Seizer as a special in 2000 or 2001.1 told her how difficult Linda's tumor makes it to plan that far ahead. Vicky was startled. The last thing she said was that she'll pray for her. Today the occupational therapist promised by Pat Cartwright arrives and interviews Linda and inspects our house. She's a tall, primly tailored young woman in her mid-twenties who seems determined to act older than her years. She makes sure we have our dogs crated before she steps into the house. She sits down cautiously, brushing dog hair off the sofa and affectedly arranging her body in a parody of good posture. She asks Linda various questions about how she is managing with cooking and bathing and wants to know whether she needs help with any of these. Linda's language ability has deteriorated even more over the past few days. She gropes for almost every noun, some of which I try to supply for 53

her. Sometimes she gets lost in sentences, seeming to forget what she has begun to say, and I attempt to translate for her. I'm hesitant about this, though, since I assume that part of the interview involves the therapist finding out how well Linda can speak and conceptualize. The young woman has a folder in which she has printed lists of questions to ask—questions she was supplied with in social-work school or maybe by her employer. She has little set-piece speeches that she's memorized in which she offers Linda advice in point form, childishly arranged as "The Three As," or "The Seven Ss." I can see Linda feeling she's being talked down to, and becoming more and more contemptuous. The woman looks at our bathroom and arranges for Linda to have a bath chair supplied for three months. She makes notes to have Linda given a provincial drug-plan card—something we don't need; my medical plan will pay for all of Linda's drugs. I wonder if I could make a poem about the woman's checklists, maybe send it to Rampike. Most of my poems these days are about language and the ideologies—such as those of this strange, well-meaning woman—that language habits convey. My writing has usually been considered avantgarde, but today much of what passes for avant-garde, or gets anthologized as "important," is writing that complains in naive language about group injustices, or that declares how sensitive people can be when they become poets—a very old topic! Too many editors, like Gary Geddes and Sharon Thesen, who have trouble reading past their infatuations with belles lettres and sentimental humanisms. Rampike is about the only Canadian poetry magazine I feel comfortable publishing in. My friend George is a lot less selective. And more circumspect. May 18,1999 Linda had an appointment this morning with Donna Bandur, a speech therapist at University Hospital to whom her neurologist had referred her. I drove her to the hospital and took her up the outpatient elevators. Donna—that's what she wants us to call her—seems to deal mainly with 54

stroke victims. She has a disability herself, perhaps from polio, and gets around her office on crutches. She tried to get Linda to talk to her and to get information from her. I reluctantly answered some of the questions, although I know that Donna wanted not only to get information but also to get some impression of Linda's language difficulties. The situation for me was very uncomfortable, although Donna was warm and professional. Linda was annoyed at being made to show her inadequacies, and she didn't want to talk much. She is skeptical that anything can be done to help her. In the afternoon we have to go to the other hospital, where Linda has an appointment with her radiologist, Dr. Barbara Fisher. The Cancer Center phoned with the appointment last week, and Michael took the call, writing "Victoria Hospital" and "main entrance" on the calendar. I park and take Linda to the hospital's main entrance, but the desk there has no record of an appointment. They send us by a maze of interior corridors to the radiology station of the Cancer Center, where I discover that we were supposed to have checked in at the center's main entrance. So we go upstairs to the desk there, check in, and are sent back to the radiology station. Linda is extremely annoyed with me throughout this saga, grumbling incoherently. Dr. Fisher appears to us as an expressionless, factual, diminutive middle-aged woman. She examines Linda's symptoms—mostly her eyesight and reflexes—and outlines what Linda will encounter in radiation therapy. There is no word yet on whether Linda has been accepted into the clinical trial of the combined radiation-chemotherapy treatment. But whether or not she is, the center will have to prepare her for a course of radiation. Linda will have several appointments at the clinic "mold room," where technicians will make a fiberglass mask for her face and head and map on it the spots through which radiation will be directed. That process will begin next week. Dr. Fisher gives Linda several simply worded pamphlets on radiation therapy. She also gives her a prescription for a steroid—dexamethesone, also known as decadron—that she assures us 55

will reduce brain-tissue swelling around the tumor and relieve some of her symptoms. Back home Linda looks at the pamphlets but can't read them. Mike and I look at them and find them superficial and uninformative. May 20,1999 There's an eighteenth-century sterling silver berry spoon in our kitchen, engraved "M'Cartney"—possibly the last remnant of Linda's grandfather's household. I stumble across it this morning as I'm searching for a spoon to stir Linda's coffee. Linda's grandfather Alan Edward McCartney was an engineer and architect and part of the CPR survey crew that laid out the Vancouver townsite in 1884-85. His brother Frank McCartney was Vancouver's first pharmacist. A third brother was a medical doctor in New York. They were born in the Bahamas—where thenfather, Henry, was an engineer—and they had been educated in England. They made routine trips back to England to visit family. Both Frank and Alan Edward signed the 1885 petition to have Vancouver incorporated. Linda keeps a photostat of that petition in her study. The Vancouver archives still follows the McCartneys as one of the city's important founding families. Linda's father, William Edward, born in 1886, spoke of having had a varied and wealthy childhood—of learning Chinook from his Indian playmates, of going on regular trips on sailing ships around Cape Horn to visit relatives in England, of being taken to the 1892 Chicago World's Fair. His own father died when he was in his early teens, and young William never received the professional education he'd been promised. The family money evaporated. He became a selftaught electrician, then a movie projectionist. He married a woman—I'm not sure I ever knew her name—who was said to be a distant relative of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. They had three children, Irene, Pearl, and Av. In the early 19205 William bought their William Street house in what was a growing middle-class suburb. Irene became a ballerina with Sadler's Wells in England. William's wife died. In his mid-fifties he got married again—this time to a woman younger than his youngest child. By then 56

Irene was retired and William Street was on the edge of Vancouver's skid row. It was into this scene of remembered grace and accomplishment that Linda was born. I've often thought that Linda, the child, created herself by identifying not with her immediate world of shabby streets and quarreling parents but with those Utopian McCartney family memories—with the sparkle of the movies and ballets she watched from a stool in her father's projection booth, or with the shine of this single berry spoon. That within a few years of being born she believed herself entitled to much more than decaying William Street. She was entitled to the yacht club adventures and fine sports cars she later enjoyed with her first husband, Roger, to the Grand Cru wines of our cellar, to the Persian carpets of our master bedroom, to the visits we made to the Louvre, the Tate, the Prado. She too became a ballerina, a child prodigy, and, like her sister Irene, she might have danced in Europe. And she learned contempt for bad taste and stupidity. For her indolent mother, who began calling her "the Duchess." Contempt such as she has now for her occupational therapist, for the chaos of Dr. Megyesi's waiting room, for my confusion that day in guiding her to the Cancer Center. She's quiet right now. Dozing in bed, half-watching the British Antiques Roadshow on her television. May 21, 1999

Sara's here from Toronto for the weekend. She is concerned that her mom will not be able to keep track of her steroid medication, which she has to take with breakfast and dinner, and that she will either miss the medication or take double. Or will forget to take the antinausea pill, ranitidine, which is to accompany the steroid. Sara and I go out to Shoppers' Drug together and buy two seven-day pillboxes. We label one "morning" and one "evening."

57

May 23,1999 Found out today that Scott has quietly been showing; Honey at almost every nickel-and-dime dog show in Ontario this year, scavenging points whenever there's little competition. He's rumored to be determined to make her the 1999 number-one Dane. I tell Linda, and she is astonished. She thinks that the idea is ludicrous, that he should be blocked. It would be an insult to all Danes, she says slowly. Linda's aristocratic scorn for mediocrity showing itself again! We hadn't been planning to show Seizer regularly in Canada—I didn't want to spend the time. But his uncle Jagger, owned by his breeders, Kelly and Glen Tait of Selkirk, Manitoba, has been showing and winning from time to time out west. After five months Seizer's probably too far behind Honey to compete with her, but Jagger may not be. Linda thinks we can show Seizer at Ontario shows to prevent Honey from winning too many more points and thereby enable Jagger, who will never be at the same shows as Honey, to come out on top in the standings. I'm not sure how I'm going to do this. Just when I'm increasingly needed at home I'm going to have to drive Seizer on more weekend show junkets? Yet I don't want Linda to be unhappy. May 25,1999 The young occupational therapist was here again today, looking as prim and uptight as ever. She talks to Linda and then has another look at the rooms Linda uses. She's worried about the Persian rugs in Linda's bedroom, bathroom, and study. She tells me to get slip-proof rubber underlay mats for them and says that I can buy them at Wai-mart or Zellers. Wai-mart!—Linda scowls. I rather like the therapist's visits—I find them amusing. She reminds me a bit of my first wife's sister—her McCall's-pattern-book ideas of elegance. But I can tell Linda thinks she's gauche, sexually repressed, unimaginative. Much the way she used to think of my first wife's sister. I wonder again about using the young woman's language for a poem.

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May 26,1999 <* Linda's wish to keep her illness secret is increasingly troubling. This spring we would almost certainly have had university friends like Manina and Neal, or Alison and Bryce, or Dane friends like Carmen and Bob, over for dinner, or we would have gone out together to a gallery opening or a nearby dog show. At work Alison asks me casually how Linda is, a pro forma inquiry, and I have to answer with the pro forma lie—Oh, pretty good, keeping busy. I mention this to John Clement, and he observes that there could also be an emotional cost for me—that usually people in my situation get to talk about it and receive at the very least supportive comments from close friends. I don't tell him that I talk to my journal. I think of the people I know are visiting Angela, bringing food, flowers, talking to George. George comments in some of his e-mail that many days what he and Ange need is more privacy. But I think I understand why Linda wants secrecy. I think she feels profoundly sabotaged. The tumor has affected the most important part of her—the part that has enabled her to feel superior to others since early childhood, that enabled her to identify with what she imagined was the lost grace and intelligence of her grandfather McCartney's household. To feel superior especially to her mother and to children from more privileged homes. Linda several times told me that the McCartneys believed they had come to Scotland from Ireland to help "the Bruce." That when she was a child she puzzled over who "the Bruce" was. We visited Scotland some time in the late 19805, and she drove me to Sterling Castle and we stood in a light rain under the large bronze statue of Robert the Bruce. I remember thinking then of her grandfather McCartney, his birth in the Bahamas, his death in Vancouver some thirty years before Linda was born. Remember thinking that she'd never seen his photograph or known the house or address where he lived. Linda was the first child of her father's second marriage. He was fiftysix when she was born, her mother twenty-five, a year younger than the 59

youngest child of William's first marriage. Her father was forced to retire on a small pension from his job as projectionist and lighting manager at Vancouver's Orpheum Theater when Linda was eleven. Before that she can remember sitting in the projection booth with him, watching Gone with the Wind; or sitting in the lighting booth while Margot Fonteyn or Violet Elvin helped him light a performance of the Royal Ballet; or having Mr. Bojangles, who was performing at the Orpheum, stay with her family because he couldn't get a hotel room in racist 19505 Vancouver. Special moments, although her little sister, Susie, has often told me the family house was a pigsty even then. Special moments that happened only because of Linda's dad. Their chronically unhappy mother didn't like cooking or housework. Piles of soiled laundry mixed with old newspapers, Susie's said, would begin near the front door and deepen towards the kitchen and up the stairs. After their dad's retirement came poverty, which their mother couldn't or wouldn't attempt to manage. Linda's mother, Jackie, had grown up in 19205 Vancouver as a kind of street kid—or so Linda's accounts make her seem—sitting on the porch of her home late at night, locked out, waiting for her alcoholic, war-widowed mother to come back when the bars closed. Jackie's father was killed at the battle of Passchendaele, a few months before her birth. On many nights an elderly neighbor couple, the Rodbournes, had taken Jackie in and fed her. Her marriage to Linda's dad was a marriage to unexperienced security— to a father figure, a large family, a steady income. A plausible narrative. Security that ended with his retirement. They would quarrel, he would go out drinking, she would await his unsteady return, much as she had the return of her mother two decades before. At eleven Linda became the only stable "woman" in the house, doing the cooking, shopping, keeping an eye on her baby sister. Or so she remembers. Says her mother couldn't budget, would blow a month's grocery money on expensive food in the first week. Linda thought her mother did this so she'd run out of money and people would feel sorry for her. Maybe that's why Gone with the Wind became Linda's favorite movie. She 60

told me she identified intensely with Scarlett, especially when Scarlett came back to Tara, found the house in ruins, her family passive and despairing, and took charge, like little Linda, of everyone. While I knew her, she would watch that movie two or three times a year. It was as if its romantic depiction of the American Civil War was serving as a symbol of all the disasters that had brought her father from legendary wealth to poverty. But past grandeur might be restored. A young girl could imagine that. You dream, you die a little, but you can dream again. As her mom became more needy, Linda became more contemptuous. When she was twelve, her mother told her that she and her dad were separating. Linda didn't believe her—she thought it more likely her mom was trying to extort something from her. Jackie asked Linda sweetly which parent she'd like to go with. "You don't want to know," Linda says she growled at her. Unconsciously, I think, Linda often viewed her mother as merely another sign of the McCartney fall from fortune. When Linda was fourteen she earned her certificate to teach ballet. Shortly after, her mom and dad allowed nine-year-old Susie to accept the gift of a horse. Linda says she angrily moved out rather than have her small checks go towards its fodder and stable fees. The two older neighbor girls Linda moved in with—Heather and Bonnie—are still alive. Their mother was absent and their father worked on the railway and was away for weeks at a time. Every few years Heather phones Linda, sometimes from Vancouver or Calgary, sometimes from the 401 expressway south of London. What will she think when she finds out Linda's dead? And there's the second big reason Linda wants secrecy. She doesn't want people's pity. For Linda, pity is in bad taste. She doesn't want people feeling sorry for her, or people like her mother having the power to withhold affection. Doesn't want her mom to know and be able to pretend to be motherly. Last night she said her only wish in life these days is to outlive her mother. I think that's only partly true. I think she's also enjoying the idea of dying without ever having told her mother she is sick. Letting her know how unimportant she was. Showing one last time contempt for her mothering. 61

May 28, 1999

I'm in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at the fairgrounds, for the four-day Apple Blossom dog show. I skipped the first day because the judge "dumped" Seizer at a Canadian show last fall. I'm still able to travel like this because Mike is at home, as he usually is. He doesn't work. I'm not sure why he doesn't—he graduated from university in honors biochemistry three years ago. He says he can't find a job in his field in London, and he doesn't want to live in a big city like Toronto, but there's likely a lot more to it. What has puzzled me is that he hasn't seemed in any rush to be independent—much different from me, who married the first time when I was twenty-one, and certainly from Linda, who struck out on her own when she was fourteen. We would have both done almost anything to be away from our parents' homes. Nevertheless, I don't ask. Linda has preferred that we leave him be. And of course it's been extremely convenient for us to have a live-in house sitter, dog watcher, and general maintenance person. I've felt guilty about that. Now his being home may be a godsend. "I'm counting on you and Mike," Linda kept saying after her biopsy. "You're going to have to look after things. My treatment. I can't do it." It seemed like the first time ever that I'd heard her say "I can't do it." May 29,1999 There aren't many Danes at this show, even though it's a booster for the local Great Dane club—just enough dogs for one point. However, Seizer won big today, taking Winners Dog with his American handler and later taking Best of Winners with me handling him. The judge tells me she nearly gave him Best of Breed. I should go home. Seizer has finished his championship. But it's so peaceful at the fairgrounds that I've decided to stay on and show Seizer myself today as a "special." I'm getting more work done on my Sherbrooke papers. Linda sounds a little perplexed and angry when I call her and not especially excited about Seizer's having finished. I guess she expected it. I walk over to a little store across from the 62

fairgrounds to buy ice and beer. I'm plugged in to electricity for Seizer's fan and my coffeepot, kettle, and laptop. In the evening he and I go for long walks around the landscaped grounds. Linda had her first appointment at the radiation department yesterday, at its "mold room," where they took measurements for the mask she will need for radiation treatments. On Tuesday I have to fly to Quebec for the conference. May 31,1999 Back from Kalamazoo and I'm off tomorrow to Montreal, on my way to Sherbrooke, to the conference—the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Canada. I'm on the executive of two associations and a director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation, which runs the conference. As well as presenting my "globalization of publishing" paper at the colloquium on globalization that the federation and the federal Department of Finance have organized, I'm presenting one on an eighteenth-century Canadian novel for the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures. Because of the scheduling of my papers and of various executive meetings, I'm going to be in Sherbrooke for a week. There are no dogs in either paper. Or cancer patients. The young occupational therapist visited Linda again today, but Linda's unclear on what she talked about. June 2,1999 I had a lot of free time today to explore the campus, look for friends, take the shuttle bus to nearby Lennoxville. A lot of time to think and remember. Linda and I used to do a lot of camping here in Quebec's Eastern Townships when Mike and Sara were small. The area, with its stone houses, low mountains, and metal-sheathed steeples, was new to us. We later did weekend camping on Lake Simcoe, near Toronto. Linda would arrive after the kids and me on the GO-bus, still dressed in her lawyer's suit and Italian shoes. And once I took the children on a long trip myself to British Columbia in a drive-away car, a Toyota wagon, that had to be delivered to Vancouver. But only once did we take a big camping trip together. 63

That was a summer in the late eighties, probably 1987, when Linda surprised me by deciding to accompany the kids and me on a trip across the U.S. to British Columbia. We would visit her mother and other family members. We would stop at Yellowstone and Crater Lake and drive through the California redwoods and up the Oregon coast. We phoned our mothers and told them about our plans, piled ourselves and our tent into Herman, our vintage Mercedes 230 sedan, and set out. Near Ogallala, Nebraska, Herman's transmission broke, and we spent four days and several thousand dollars getting it repaired. We used the time to rent a car and visit Aspen and Denver and Council Bluffs. Linda phoned her mother again and let her know our revised schedule. We drove overnight from Ogallala to Boise, the last four hours without a functioning generator— we got it rebuilt quickly in Boise. We drove leisurely and uneventfully around Crater Lake, through the redwoods, up the Oregon coast. Near Portland Linda called her mother to let her know we'd be on her doorstep that evening. Mike and Sara were full of anticipation to see their rarely visited grandmothers. There was no answer. We drove on to Seattle, and Linda phoned again. I went with her to the phone booth. Still no answer. On a hunch, Linda phoned her sister, Susie, in Edmonton. There her mom was.

Jackie said she'd flown out "on a whim" two days before. She told Linda that we could drive on to Edmonton and visit her there, that Edmonton wasn't much out of our way. I saw Linda's face tense. She told her mother she could "get stuffed" and that she hoped she'd never see her grandchildren again. She slammed down the receiver. We came back to the car and she told Mike and Sara what had happened. They were confused, agitated, and angry. Then she sat in the front seat weeping. She said the only way her mother could hurt her was through her kids. "Manipulative bitch," she muttered. Jackie wanted to drag us all up to Edmonton, she said, to prove to herself how important she was. Linda then began to pretend cheerfulness. She promised Mike and Sara a good vacation in Vancouver anyway. We had a key to Jackie's house and would stay there to spite her. 64

We'd go to the beach or the mountains every day. We'd visit their numerous cousins. And my mother and uncle. And that's what we did. After a week we piled once again into the Mercedes and headed back to Toronto through Montana and Illinois. We made two stops to sleep. Linda did most of the driving, some days averaging ninety miles per hour, including stops for gas. We got home in less than three days. June 4,1999 Thought I would be writing more in this journal, but everywhere I go on the Sherbrooke campus, where most of the conference is being held, I run into old friends from other universities. I was president of the university and college English teachers' association in the mid-1990s—it's one of the largest associations here. Most of these friends have met me only at conferences, or in university settings. They don't know Linda, or don't ask about her. Two or three I have known since graduate school, and I feel very close to them. Almost every night I am with a different group of friends for dinner in upscale restaurants. One of them is a young man who emigrated from Germany as a child and who has written a fine book on multiculturalism and otherness. Winfried rescued me at a bus stop last night and drove me to a riverbank cafe in the countryside. I would never want to introduce him to Linda, who has several times passionately, embarrassingly, grilled my German academic friends about what their families did during the war. Once it was Konrad Gross, one-time president of the German Association for Canadian Studies, whose father, a Lutheran minister, was imprisoned by the Nazis for attempting to help Jews. We'd been drinking most of the evening. He became very emotional and for a moment I thought he and Linda were going to sob together. In 1989 Linda and Sara and I were wandering through the grounds of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. A few moments before, Linda had posed for me to photograph her in the old Ottoman harem. Sara decided to change some money at the palace bureau. About twenty German tourists 65

descended from a tour bus and began pushing in front of Sara, who was second in line. Linda stormed through them to Sara's side. "My daughter was here first," she shouted. "Get back, you—you bunch of Huns!" "Oh, you shouldn't say that word," a shocked and earnest-looking middle-aged woman responded, in good English. "Then you shouldn't act like it," Linda growled. June 5,1999 Soren Dog is worse. I'm still away in Sherbrooke. Linda tells me that she and Mike have taken him to the vet because he's been so sluggish. Just lying in the front parlor as if waiting to die. Groaning when he is made to get to his feet. Our vet discovered at once that he had a massive fluid buildup in the chest cavity around his lungs. His heart wasn't beating well enough to pick up and deliver excess fluid to his kidneys. The vet inserted a large needle between his ribs and drained several pints of blood-tinged fluid. Soren shook with fear during the procedure. I remember having to take his brother Sigmund to the same vet last year for tha t procedure, but Siggie was always quiet and trusting. It must be much harder for Soren. June 8,1999 Soren is dead. I came home yesterday to find his entire chest and abdomen swollen with edema and him in so much pain that he had to be helped to his feet even to go out to pee. He had stopped eating, apparently unable to walk to the next room and his food dish. When I would walk into the parlor he didn't raise his head to look or thump his tail on the floor. He had lain all day, flat on his side, panting and occasionally moaning. Today he was the same. Linda had said she'd kept him alive only so I could see him one last time, but throughout the day he lay panting, and she made no move to call the vet. He's her dog, I mean her special dog, and I didn't know what to do. Finally, around 4 P.M., I went to her bedroom, where she had lain most of the day, and told her I thought I should call Warren, our vet. She nodded, and I called and arranged to take him to be 66

put down around 5:45, just before Warren closed his office. I felt so guilty doing this. I went to look at Soren, and he was still lying there panting. I thought maybe I should have his chest pumped out again. When Siggie was dying, I had Warren drain his chest and abdomen about a dozen times, sometimes twice a week. I would stroke Siggie's head with one hand and hold a pan with the other, as Warren or Christy, his nurse, pumped the pan to overflowing with frothy pink fluid. Then emptied it and filled it again. Canine palliative care. But as Soren has weakened, he has become increasingly afraid of the vet's office because he can no longer keep his footing on the tile floor. He starts trembling when he sees the building. As 5:30 approaches Mike and I try to get Soren into the van. He struggles to his feet. He thinks he is going for a car ride—something he likes enormously. He hobbles to the garage, but he collapses when he tries to climb into the van. He wags his tail. Mike and I have to lift him. He lies down immediately. Linda hobbles to the van—she's coming with me. Because of Soren's fears, I've arranged for Warren to come out to the van and give him the fatal injection there. We arrive. I go alone into the office. Laurene, the receptionist, who has seen Soren since he was a pup, gives me a form to sign, one that authorizes his euthanizing. She looks unhappy too. I wish someone else were signing. She draws a thick black line below the last entry in Soren's file. I go back to the van. Moments later Warren comes out holding a very large needle, thicker than that black line. Linda struggles from her seat to go into the back of the van with Soren. I don't want to look. Linda is incoherent, but Warren, I'm sure, thinks that it's because she's distraught. She cradles Soren's enormous head in her arms as Warren looks for the appropriate vein in his neck. When the injection hits his heart Soren starts abruptly, as if shot, almost leaping upright, then collapses into a beautiful twitching wreck. I wish I hadn't looked. I loved

him. I now have to help Warren lift Soren's limp, inarticulate, i6o-pound body from the van onto a stretcher. I had laid out an old sheet in the van, 67

and Soren has died on top of it, enabling us to use it to lift him. But his dead weight is so awkward. We nearly drop him. I remember helping Warren carry Siggie's body from the same van, wrapped in the same sheet. Carry him to Warren's freezer. Poor Siggie, who died at home, unassisted, the night before I had made an appointment with Warren. We wheel Soren to that freezer, where he will be kept until the Humane Society comes to take him away for cremation. Like Siggie, he fills the entire freezer. We have to move a much smaller corpse to get him in, and then we gently try to fold his limbs. Warren is worried about how he will get him out, and he tries to insert paper between him and sides of the freezer so that he doesn't adhere. Warren is also worried about rescuing my sheet. I don't think Linda knows how much I loved that dog. June u, 1999 I've finally told George that Linda is ill. It's been three weeks since his last note to me. I tell him that Linda seems focused on playing her new narrative out as best she can, covertly, and without melodrama. I tell him I can believe the momentary happinesses he reports he and Angela are experiencing. This is not a dialogue either of us knows much about. I don't tell him about Soren. I've also told Patrick, my department chair at Western. He needs to know because I've been elected to the Appointments Committee, which will likely be interviewing candidates for two positions this year. I've already had to miss one meeting because it conflicted with one of Linda's hospital visits. I tell him I've been having trouble concentrating on intellectual things—which is true. I'm lucky I had my papers for the Sherbrooke conference mostly written before Linda took ill. He says to let him know if there's anything he can do to help, but we both recognize that there's not much he can do as long as Linda wants no one to know she's ill. June 14,1999 The occupational therapist visits again today. She's concerned because she thinks she has nothing more to offer. She's run out of lists of ques68

tions. She tries giving Linda a memory lesson—a list of ways to organize her activities so as to limit the effects of forgetfulness. She wants to watch Linda prepare a meal. She arranges with Linda for her next visit to be just before a supper time. It will probably be her last visit, at least for a while. June 15 1999 There is still no word from the chemotherapy/radiation trial. There seems to be a delay at the Delaware office of the American pathologist who decides what patients are eligible. It pisses me off—doesn't he know someone could die, or die too early, because he's fucking around? Or is he overworked, like most of the medical people we've met? Linda's London doctors, Dr. Fisher and Dr. David Macdonald, a specialist in chemotherapy, are becoming alarmed at the delay and recommend that she proceed to radiation. However, information about the trial that I have uncovered on the Internet suggests to me that it has been much more successful a treatment than conventional approaches. Frustrated by our failure to convey this to Dr. Fisher, we go to see Dr. McCully, who arranges for us to meet with Dr. Macdonald, who is also one of the doctors who is conducting the trial. He insists that there is no evidence that the trial treatment is better or worse than conventional treatment—that although there have been some promising results, they are statistically insignificant as yet. I am still not convinced. But I think he is a kind man and wants to do the right thing. June 18,1999 I took Linda to the Cancer Center for the second fitting of the molded fiberglass mask that she will need for her radiation treatments. An orderly led her off down a long corridor. I sat in the large and airy waiting room reading the sports section of the local newspaper. There was a steady procession of cancer patients to the various nursing stations around the room's periphery. Some were wheeled in on stretchers—gaunt faces and wispy gray hair visible beneath the sheets. There was an elegantly dressed, 69

slender, older woman who strode in alone as if determined that her cancer could not damage her self-image. An elderly husband and wife, overweight, in dull, baggy clothes. Unclear which one was ill. A thin, suntanned, middleaged man in a plaid shirt and tight jeans with a truck driver's wallet chained to his hip pocket. A young, athletically built man wearing the jacket of a local sports team and supported by an older woman as he walked. June 21,1999 This was the day that the young occupational therapist was to come to watch Linda prepare a dinner. Linda worried for several days about what to cook, until I suggested to her poulet en casserole—a cut-up chicken cooked in white wine, with small carrots, small squares of ham, a panoply of spices, topped off with flaming brandy and served on a bed of rice or pasta. She liked that idea because the dish is complex and showy but also one she has prepared many times. She sent me out to shop for the ingredients and carefully organized them so she would know exactly where they were while she was cooking. Mike washed the kitchen floor and the counters, and I vacuumed the TV room and dining room, as I usually do before the young woman visits. None of us viewed this dinner as an opportunity to receive helpful suggestions. We all saw it more as a test, particularly Linda, for whom cooking has now become the only familiar activity she can still do with satisfaction and success. If the young therapist were to suggest that she were unsafe in the kitchen, to herself or to others, she would be devastated. But it went well. The therapist seemed impressed with the complexity and aroma of the main dish and by how Linda's familiarity with the kitchen, with where things are kept, and her careful planning were compensating for her memory loss. Linda was also careful to call Mike or me when she needed to pour or lift something hot and heavy—something that, with her weakened right-side muscles, she might not have been able to grip. The therapist left once the meal was on the table—we invited her to stay and eat with us, but evidently that wasn't part of her job. Mike and 70

I told Linda that whatever the therapist had for dinner wouldn't seem as good to her as what she'd smelled in our kitchen. June 22,1999 George has sent me a copy of a small privately printed book he has written, along with a pair of signed bookmarks. I wonder if this is in response to my message about Linda. I wrote him a short e-mail thanking him and kidding him about writing up a storm amid his troubles. I told him I hope to find a way to do something similar. I also told him about Soren's death and about how I still find myself looking for him on the mat at the foot of my bed where he used to sleep. June 25,1999 Linda got a call on Wednesday from one of the nurses at the Cancer Center. She said there'd unexpectedly been an opening in the radiation unit and that Linda could begin treatment Friday—today. Linda, surprisingly, had the alertness to ask whether beginning now would jeopardize her eligibility for the chemotherapy/radiation trial. The nurse doesn't think so, but she will check with Dr. Fisher and call back and cancel the appointment if there's a problem. She hasn't called back. I was in Hamilton this morning with Seizer. Mike took Linda to the appointment. Both report that it was uneventful. Linda says she had no sensations that anything was happening during the seconds of radiation. There's a note from George. He's amazed that two weeks have gone by since I wrote him about Linda. He says he knows he is stressed out but gets angry when people tell him that he is, because what's happening to him "isn't a thousandth of what Angela has to go through." Physical signs of Angela's cancer are starting to appear—she's joking about her "concentration camp" body. The steroids she's taking to relieve swelling around her tumors appear to be affecting her memory, so he's having to double-check that she's remembering her medications and what her doctors have told her about them. He wishes this wasn't happening to me and to Linda. 7i

I wonder what Linda would think of Angela's concentration-camp reference—but I'm not going to mention it. She'd probably take it seriously—thinking that a cancer patient's body does become a kind of concentration camp. Although Linda's never liked jokes about the Holocaust, and she has often acted as if the war against Nazism is still not over. Which I think, in a general sense, is true. She's maintained a personal boycott of Germany. I remember in the 19808 our attending the first annual Toronto Arts Awards—a night that still stands out in my love for her. We sat at a table and ate dinner with our friends Marian Engel and Matt Cohen. Between dinner and the presentation of the awards, a comedy team hired by the organizers presented a skit about Hitler and SS atrocities against Jews. When his officials report the atrocities to him, the Hitler character laughs them away, saying "Veil, veil, boys vill be boys!" Maybe the actors naively thought they were satirizing Nazism or Holocaust denial. But most of the more than one thousand of us in the ballroom sat stunned at what we were hearing. Without a word to Matt, Marian, or me, Linda grabbed her purse, stormed to a corner near the stage, and began addressing the audience. "Are you just going to sit and listen to this anti-Semitic drivel?" she shouted. "Well, I'm not, and neither should you!" She headed for the exit. I jumped up at once and followed her, as did Matt and Marian and about seven hundred others—we discovered this when we watched the late evening news two hours later. I was both proud of her and envious. Linda grinned in amazement at herself, saying over and over again, "My god, I caused a scene." The next morning the; Globe and Mail reported that an "unidentified woman" had led the walkout. Linda grinned again and said she wished she'd been identified and the fact mentioned that she wasn't Jewish. June 30,1999 Linda's radiation schedule has her getting treatment every day except Saturday and Sunday. She's to see Dr. Fisher for assessment every Friday, although not this Friday because of the Canada Day holiday. Today she's 72

been called in to see her neurosurgeon, Dr. Megyesi. We're not sure what it's all about, or even what role Dr. Megyesi now has in her treatment. Once again we wait for more than an hour in the pediatric ward, surrounded by small children, some with hair loss from radiation therapy, some with withered limbs, all with anxious parents. Each patient's appointment seems again to have been booked for 9:15. Linda's not happy. She grumbles about the noise of the children, about the laziness suggested by the appointment scheduling, about having to wait, about having to be in a children's ward, about having to see Megyesi, whom she still loathes. When we finally get to see him we discover it's merely a routine follow-up to her biopsy. He's cheerful. He regrets that he has no information about her treatment, or about her eligibility for the trial. He checks her vision, asks her about headaches, and pronounces her free of any aftereffects from his surgery. We go home and come back in the afternoon for Linda's radiation. July 2, 1999 Another note from George. He wonders if we have any dogs left. Angela went plant shopping with a friend and fell off her medical scooter while inside one of those big wheelchair taxis. The friend and the driver managed to get her "back in the saddle." Then, George says, "she bought the hell out of a bunch more garden plants." There's also an e-mail note from my friend Lynette, who teaches at the University of Leeds, who has published essays about my writing—and George's and Daphne Marlatt's—and who's met Linda at a couple of conferences. I think of her as one of the most trustworthy people I know. I decide to confide in her about Linda's tumor and about the journal I've been writing. I don't think I could tell anyone else about this journal. She writes back immediately that my news is "appalling." She says I must continue the journal because it's "memory work." Without memory, I reflect, there would not only be no history or culture, but also no love or enduring relationships. No identity. No gardens. No "people." 73

July 6,1999 I've spent the last four days driving back and forth to Sarnia for a dog show. It's extremely hot. Seizer won Best of Breed on three of the days, and I've had to wait several hours for him to show in Group. There is no shade in the parking lot. When I try to keep my van engine idling and the air-conditioner running the engine overheats. I drive down the parkway almost to Leamington each day to help the engine cool off. At home Linda's still muddling through. Cooking dinner each evening, from memory I guess—spareribs and saffron rice, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, coq au vin. And determined to cook, as if not to would be to surrender to the inevitability of dying. Mike is driving her to the grocery store each day to do the shopping. It's now after dinner, and during the meal none of us had much to say. Not that our dinners have been scenes of elegant conversation in recent years. Sometime in the last ten or twelve years Linda began bringing a book to the dinner table and reading it while we were eating. Not a law book or briefing notes, nothing urgent for her to read, but a Danielle Steel, Scott Turow, Anne McCaffrey, or Elizabeth Peters. In the beginning I would sometimes remark that she was being rude—that she wouldn't like it if Mike or Sara or I read at the table. "So?" she'd reply. "You have something important to say? Go ahead, say it, I'm listening!" And then go back to reading her book. Mike used to feel especially silenced, slighted, scorned by this, as if he was being told he was of less importance than fiction he regarded as trivia or trash. Eventually he began cooking many of his own suppers and eating them at different times. So when Linda could no longer read at dinner, when she put her book aside in frustration, both he and I felt almost relieved, rewarded after twelve years of waiting. But soon we discovered that she not only couldn't read. She could hardly speak. July 9,1999 A bad day, I think, although Seizer beat Honey at the show in nearby Woodstock. Because of the holiday it was Linda's first appointment 74

with Dr. Fisher since beginning radiation two weeks ago. With me in Woodstock, Mike took her to the appointment. They went to the hematology unit for a blood test and then downstairs to the radiology rooms. A male resident saw her first and checked her reflexes and her vision and then asked her the usual question about headaches. No, she was not having headaches. Dr. Fisher came in and repeated some of the tests. Mike and I had been anxious about the combined chemotherapy/radiation trial, and Mike seized the first opportunity to ask Dr. Fisher about it. "Oh, she's been accepted, but she's not eligible," she replied. "Why is that?" Mike says he asked. "Because she's had radiation. There was a mistake—the nurses didn't know that she was supposed to wait to hear about the trial and went ahead and scheduled her. But it won't make any difference. She'll get the same treatment." "When was she accepted?" "The beginning of last week. But she'd already had a radiation treatment, so she no longer matched the conditions of the trial. But she'll still get both radiation and chemotherapy when she needs them." "But in a different sequence," Mike remembers noting. "There's no evidence that it makes any difference," said Dr. Fisher. But Mike's not so sure. The whole point of the trial is that there's some evidence that giving chemotherapy before or during radiation creates a more effective treatment. He wonders whether Dr. Fisher was simply putting the best spin on an unfortunate situation. "She's already waited longer for radiation than she should have," Dr. Fisher had added. Mike didn't question this remark—we have both been reading the Globe and Mailreports of backlogs in Ontario's cancer clinics, of breast and prostate cancer patients risking their lives by waiting two months or more to begin radiation treatments, of them being sent to Buffalo or Cleveland for treatment in high-priced hospitals there. But this overloading didn't explain the tardiness of the American pathologist who admits patients to the trial. Mike was frustrated. He didn't want to get 75

angry at Dr. Fisher, who generally seems to be a kind, reserved person, and on whom Linda's now dependent for treatment. But we both feel we've been let down. That Linda's been let down. That someone may have thrown away one of her best chances for surviving. I wish I'd been there today. But what good could I have done? Wrote to George today but didn't tell him about this screwup. Angela's been feeling pain in her legs and skin, probably because of her medications. I comment that cancer treatment seems to be a zero-sum process— you exchange pain today for life, or the chance of life, a few months hence. Tell him that Linda has been angrily and impatiently persevering. Tell him that I find it embarrassing to be thinking sometimes about the future, that I try to avoid saying anything about how our wines are aging, or how one of our puppies will look in a year or two. I mean that I am embarrassed in front of Linda to be able to plan to continue living. July 14,1999 We're in a routine of daily visits to the Cancer Center, usually at around 10 A.M. Linda's doing well—having few symptoms of fatigue and only slight early signs of hair loss at the points where the radiation is concentrated. She'll eventually need a wig—we're told that there's a wig room at the center where she can borrow a wig or a turban. She enjoys getting out. She often asks to be taken to a supermarket directly from the center. Mike or I steer her and the shopping cart around the store. She tends to lurch unexpectedly to the right from time to time, and sometimes she forgets what she is looking for and stops mysteriously in the center of an aisle. People glance curiously at her as they step around her but then rush on with their own shopping. Once we're home, she leaves us to put away her purchases and goes and lies down on her bed and watches television. July 18,1999 Most of what Linda has in her life these days is television. When she is groping for a word to designate an electrical device, like our kettle or 76

microwave or toaster, the only one she can reliably find is "VCR." For the past five years she has been taping programs on the downstairs VCR and taking them up to her own VCR in her bedroom to watch at her leisure, fast-forwarding past commercials. Star Trek. Deep Space Nine. Mystery. NYPD Blue. ER. Antiques Roadshow. Often she has fallen asleep while watching, leaving the tape to run out during the night and the television set to blare on a strange channel or to squeal an all-night test signal. Some nights I've woken in a panic, thinking that a smoke detector is squealing, and then I trace the sound to the TV in Linda's room. Now she watches TV through her VCR twenty-four hours a day. The tumor and the radiation and the steroid pills she takes to reduce brain swelling have all interfered with her sleep. She sleeps whenever she can, whether this is in the evening or morning or midafternoon. When she wakes she rewinds the VCR to where she last remembers watching. At least she can still remember. Each morning over coffee she labors over the TV listings, making rough circles with her shaking right hand around the programs she wants me to tape. I program the downstairs VCR three times a day—morning, late afternoon, and just before bedtime—and I change the tape cartridges almost as often. Mike and I both wonder what we will do if the time comes when she can no longer read the TV listings, or find words to tell us what she'd like us to tape. We have saved old TV listings that she has marked so we will have a record of the kind of programs she likes. But what if she becomes incapable of playing back the tapes on her bedroom machine? Will we have to monitor her and the machine, inserting tapes and playing them for her while we are taping more programs downstairs? Will she secretly, inarticulately, wish that we were taping different programs? Will she no longer like the ones she wants to watch now? Or will it even matter what we tape? There's a bizarre resonance for me in this kitschy combination of mystery, sci-fi, and police drama that Linda now has us taping to relieve her boredom. A resonance from our first date. Perhaps it wasn't quite a 77

date, but we ended up having oral sex amid a sea of buttered popcorn in the back of Linda's old Jag and sleeping together later at my house. A night from an Italian movie. Our elderly department chair had invited all three members of his department, their wives, and my ex-wife, Helen, to dinner. Maybe he was trying to patch things between myself and Helen. Or between Roger and Linda, since it had become generally known at the college that Roger was planning to leave Linda behind when he left next month for doctoral study in Britain. I had picked up Helen at her apartment in my Triumph TR4- Roger and Linda had come in her huge old black Jaguar saloon. A Mark VII. An expression of her gourmet tastes even then. We'd had a polite and enjoyable dinner. Much literary wit. Towards the end of the evening Helen suggested we all go somewhere for a latenight hamburger, or to her place to bake brownies. Probably annoyed by such bourgeois suggestions, Linda impetuously countered that we could all go to the Tillicum Outdoor Theater—one of the first Canadian driveins—for the midnight triple horror show. The third department member, Geoff, and his wife, Sondra, declined both possibilities, saying they had to get back to their baby-sitter. Somewhat of a snob about art, despite being a collector and performer of folk music, Roger pronounced Linda's suggestion "appalling." To trump both Roger and Helen, I voted for triple horror. "Can we have popcorn?" exclaimed Linda. "Oh, can we, can we?"— mischievously parodying the "bad taste" that the drive-in represented to Roger. "Sure," I said, playing along. "And Revel bars or orange creamsicles." "Orange creamsicles!" she had exclaimed. "Okay! Frank and I are going to the triple horror! You guys can do what you want." We quickly decided to leave Helen and Roger my little red TR so we could be more comfortable at the drive-in. I parked the Jag midway to the screen, and Linda ran off to buy the popcorn. When she came back she slid across the seat into my arms. I had her bra off and her breasts in my hands before the first mouthful of popcorn.

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July 21, 1999 I am standing in our wine cellar. I came back last night, a day early, from a dog show near Smith's Falls. I couldn't stand being away, although I know Mike does a fine job of looking after things. I've always felt restless being away from Linda, except during an intense two-month trip to India in 1982. But now that restlessness is worse. Linda's sent me down to choose a wine for dinner. There are over eight hundred bottles of wine here, most of which Linda selected and which will only be ready to drink in five to fifteen years' time. We have joked about laying in wine for our old age and about whether our tasting abilities would be equal to the quality of the wine. There are approximately a hundred bottles of Margaux, Linda's favorite wine, including a 1993 Chateau Margaux and several half-cases of Chateau Palmer. She used to specify what wine and year she wanted to drink with each of our dinners, but now she can no longer remember their names, or even their varieties, and when I ask her what she'd like she says "You decide," or "Whatever." July 22,1999 Mike watered all the plants in our solarium again tonight—the plants that are the remains of the ones Linda had bought in her periodic enthusiasms for indoor gardening and that—between enthusiasms—I have diffidently cared for. He assertively and somewhat mysteriously took over their care shortly after her diagnosis. It's been at least a year and a half since her last enthusiasm waned. At first I tried to remind her of the need to water the plants by offering to bring buckets of fertilized water to the room for her to use. "Just leave them there," she had said, "and I'll water them when I have time." I would bring two large buckets filled with water and a week later find them still full, somewhat scummy on top, and the plants a little drier and sadder. So I would water the plants and refill the buckets. A week and a half later the buckets would still be full and the plants dry once again. I again watered and refilled, not telling Linda I had done so. Occasionally I would say to 79

her, "Those plants look awfully dry," hoping she would tltiink that a month or more had passed since they had been watered. If she thought that, she evidently didn't care. I don't think she ever watered them again. I kept up the charade of not watering, of merely keeping the buckets full, for more than a year. Mike knew, however. He worried about our cat's habit of drinking from the scummy buckets I was keeping "for Linda" and carefully covered them whenever he noticed that I'd left them uncovered. He knew that all of the tender plants that needed more than my every-second-week watering schedule had died, including many orchids and ferns, and one of the two bougainvillea. He could see that there'd been no pruning, or dividing of the African violets, or repotting, and no attempts to control pests like scale and spider mites. While I had swept the tile floor occasionally, I had not swept the corners behind the illuminated tables of orchids, or behind the large ficus and banana plants, and I had let the piles of dry leaves there becomes homes to spiders and small beetles. Without a word, once we had learned of Linda's tumor, Mike took over the room. He pruned the dead leaves and stalks from the hanging plants. He threw out the dead orchids and ferns. He moved the plant stands and columns and large floor plants and swept, washed, and disinfected the floor. He divided the African violets. He took cuttings from the lipstick plants that were infected with scale. He took the ficus trees out onto the porch and sprayed them with pyrethrin. He picked the larger, resistant scale from the trees by hand. All during the weeks of Linda's radiation therapy he was sorting plants, throwing out the most diseased, growing new ones—"disease-free stock" he called them—from cuttings, pruning and spraying those he thought salvageable. The room, which had been so full of bushy, unkempt foliage, began looking bald and barren. July 23,1999 At the hospital today for Linda's weekly meeting with Dr. Fisher. We met first with another young resident, who seemed about eight months 80

pregnant, and who asked Linda how she had been. Linda said she'd been "okay." She of course hasn't been okay, but maybe she meant relative to her condition, or maybe she found the challenge of articulating anything more complex too daunting. I volunteered that Mike and I both think that she has been emotionally more varied, and more patient, over the past week. Linda grunted that this was not her opinion. After the resident left I asked Linda how she was feeling. She said that Mike and I know nothing about how she feels and that there is no way she can put into words how her head feels. She rolled her eyes, implying that her brain feels strange. She said she's also been having more problems with her eyes, that now she can't see clearly straight ahead as well as not having much peripheral vision. But when Dr. Fisher came in and asked how she was, she offered none of these observations. It's possible that she'd forgotten them. I reminded her of them, and Dr. Fisher checked her eyesight and said that she'll get an eye specialist to look at them once the radiation course is over. I think she was implying that the radiation might be causing the vision problems rather than the tumor. Tonight I feel impatient writing this. I want to get it recorded, but I also would rather be doing something else, although I have no idea what that may be.

Then Linda began asking Dr. Fisher questions. "What's going to happen to me?" "When am I going to die?" "Am I always going to be like this?" The anxiety behind the questions was painful. I wondered as I listened whether Linda was only now beginning to appreciate the trap she was in, that while—as Dr. Fisher had explained last month—the radiation could reduce or stop the tumor from growing, it could not undo any damage the tumor had caused. The treatment might prevent her from getting worse, at least for the time being, or give her brain a chance to reprogram itself for some functions, but it cannot repair her optic nerve or restore the interconnecting role of the thalamus. At best it may offer her a longer life—a life in which she would be unable to read or write, unable to see 81

properly, unable to travel, unable to walk her dog, program her VCR, or do most of the things that had previously made her life interesting. Dr. Fisher's replies were both evasive and, I suppose, technically "correct." She smiled and joked that she couldn't foretell Linda's death any more than she could have foretold that of J.F.K. Junior. Linda might die in a car crash two years from now. The radiation therapy might allow her to live for ten years roughly as she is now. Or it might cause the tumor to mutate and become more dangerous and rapid-growing, and she might live only the year. "When will I get chemotherapy?" Linda asked. "When or if the tumor starts growing again," Dr. Fisher replied. She said again that there was no evidence that giving chemotherapy with radiation therapy was any more effective than giving radiation therapy alone. July 24, 1999 A fairly ordinary thunder and lightning storm late this afternoon. I was sitting in my study at my computer reading e-mail when there was a tremendous gust of wind that seemed almost to be pushing our trees through my third-floor windows. Then there was an enormous crash—I thought it was a thunderclap. The lights went out and my computer screen went blank. I looked out and discovered that one of the iso-foot maple trees on the east side of our house was lying shattered in the side street. Beneath it the hydro wires that it had pulled down with it were sparking and flaming. I ran downstairs to make sure the dogs had not been outside. Linda was getting a roast out of the electric oven and had vegetables cooking on the gas stove, which was still operating. Sara helped her find candles so we could eat by their light, while Mike and I went upstairs to the balcony to watch the remains of the tree flash and flare from the heat of the severed wires. Our phone was still operating, so I called Hydro to report the damage. Linda still didn't understand what had happened. She asked why was I phoning Hydro—she was sure that the power outage must be a citywide problem rather than one caused by damage on our own street. I suggested she go up to the balcony to look at the damage, 82

which was very impressive. As well as the Hydro wires, the tree had torn down the electrical services to our house and two neighboring houses and the whole street's Rogers Cablevision wires. She reluctantly trudged upstairs to the balcony, several times pausing to ask why I thought she should do this. One Hydro crew arrived within minutes and cordoned off the street. The fire department also arrived and watched the tree branches burn. The repair crew didn't arrive until four hours later, when it was dark and difficult to work. July 27,1999 Yesterday, three days after our difficult meeting with Dr. Fisher, Linda unexpectedly announced at breakfast that she thought she was getting better. She recognized that she had more vocabulary—she could remember the names of brussels sprouts, broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower and didn't have to call them all peas. That she was calling the microwave, fridge, and range by their own names and not calling them all "VCR." She thought the radiation must be working. I suggested that perhaps it was shrinking the tumor and giving her a chance to retrain undamaged parts of the brain to perform the tasks previously done by parts harmed by the tumor. She thought that was plausible—she seemed to remember that it was unlikely that the damaged parts would recover. I mentioned the speech therapist at the university hospital who was willing to work with her when the course of radiation had ended. She seemed a bit skeptical that this woman could help her, pointing out that she worked mainly with stroke victims, but she agreed that at this point there might not be that much difference between herself and a stroke victim. But her vision was deteriorating, she said. It was entirely blurry, and increasingly so each day. I wonder if this was the reason she'd been so adamant to Dr. Fisher that she wasn't getting better. I suggested that it might be the radiation that was doing this—that it might be due to nerve damage rather than brain damage. I wonder how reassuring that could be. If you are going blind one cause may seem just as bad as another. 83

Today Linda's complaining about hours of blank video that I've recorded for her. Apparently the storm has left several Cablevision channels unavailable to us. July 29, 1999 There has been a mass shooting in Atlanta—a "day trader" named Barton, who lost more than $100,000 in the past month personally playing the stock market on the Internet, bludgeoned his wife and two children to death; then he went to the offices where he used to sit at a terminal trading stocks and shot numerous people, killing nine. One of the victims— the manager of one of the trading companies—had an inoperable brain tumor and had been undergoing treatment for the past two years. His doctors, the Globe and Mail says, had forecast that the tumor would kill him, but he had been sure that "God" would not let that happen. I wonder what jokes Dr. Fisher might make about his death. Linda's had a difficult day. A moving van early this morning hit the low-hanging Cablevision wires that had been left by the Rogers repair crews last Monday. She's had no Internet service and no television—the only things she has to amuse her—most of the day. It's as if the electronic extensions of her brain have suddenly decayed faster and more catastrophically than her brain itself. She moans and fidgets. I phoned Rogers around noon when I realized that perhaps no one else on the street had. A crew didn't arrive to make temporary repairs until tonight. But they're a lot faster than her doctors. I went out and let the workers know that even before the truck hit the cables several channels had been missing from our service—ones Linda had relied on for her supply of taped programs. They managed to restore these during their repairs. August 3,1999 Yesterday at dinner I told Linda that our younger Great Dane, Stevie, no longer had a professional handler to show him at the Great Dane specialties on August 20-21. She was angrier than she'd been since the first 84

signs of the tumor. She gripped her wine glass and banged it on the table. "You asshole," she said. "I knew you'd let that happen. I'm not going to let you show him yourself. You look like such an asshole in the ring." I sat there trying to figure why it meant so much to her that this dog be expertly presented. He's an immature dog of considerable promise who has never done especially well at dog shows. He's underweight, has never eaten well, and looks decidedly less muscular and substantial than other dogs his age. I didn't want to suggest any of this to her—in the past she's pretended that he has no limitations as a show dog. August 5,1999 Sitting in the waiting room while Linda has her daily radiation therapy, I watch the most ill patients being wheeled in on stretchers for their therapy. For the most part they are alone, except for the orderlies or ambulance drivers attending them. I wonder if this is Linda's future—that someday I will watch her being wheeled in for some last-ditch treatment. Spent the evening doing early work on an issue of the literary journal I've been editing for the past thirty-four years, Open Letter. It's to be an issue about women and illness and the difficulties many women have in getting male doctors to recognize their illnesses. I don't think Linda would consider many of the women in the articles very ill. Or dignified. She'd probably associate them unkindly with her attention-seeking mother. August 10, 1999 Yesterday was her last radiation session. Afterward we saw Dr. Macdonald, who is to be our new contact with the Cancer Center. He joked about this having been her "graduation day." She did not appear amused. He asked her the usual questions about her symptoms, and she complained, as she has been doing all week, about the deterioration of her vision and her fatigue. She also complained that she didn't like what was happening to her personality—that she was irritable, impatient, shorttempered. Earlier she had yelled at a hematology technician when she 85

discovered that the note she'd received in the mail from the hospital telling her she needed blood work had to be accompanied by a form she was supposed to have picked up at a different office. She; had snatched the note from the woman's hand and stormed out. Dr. Macdonald thought her irritability was probably a side effect of the steroids she was taking and would lessen if he were able to reduce the dosage. It was quite clear to Dr. Macdonald and a younger doctor present, a resident pathologist, that Linda's language skills had improved enormously during the treatment. The resident had asked her to identify all the parts of his watch in rapid succession—winder, crystal, hands, band—and she had answered perfectly. Near the end of the visit she again asked the question, she had asked of Dr. Fisher—"How am I going to die?"—and she complained that Dr. Fisher wouldn't answer it. Dr. Macdonald looked troubled—I guessed he was wondering if he really should answer—and he said that if the tumor began growing again, and tumors usually did at some point, they would find chemical treatments for it. It was possible, however, that treatment options would be exhausted and the tumor would grow unchecked. The symptoms she had before treatment would recur—right-side weakness, language problems, and sleepiness. The sleepiness would become a coma, and she would die shortly thereafter. He said she was unlikely to have any pain that couldn't be relieved. She said she didn't want to linger as an invalid—"to be a burden," she said—and he said that was unlikely, adding that the Cancer Center wouldn't do anything to prolong her life, like putting her on a respirator, at such a time. She is to come in for an MRI scan in four to five weeks. It will tell us how much good the radiation has done. Then she is to have an MRI monthly so that the doctors can keep track of the tumor and its growth rate and be ready to intervene with chemotherapy if or when it begins to grow again. I have the impression that chemotherapy may be at least several months or a year away—or that Dr. Macdonald hopes it will be. The biopsy did show the tumor to be slow-growing, and it should be even slower now. Dr. Macdonald gave us a schedule for tapering off Linda's steroid dosage. 86

August 15,1999 I've been away for a week at various dog shows. Seizer hasn't done well, getting beaten more times than he should by Scott Johnson's young bitch, who has matured recently more rapidly than Seizer has. Scott's also "stolen" the professional handler, Dora Ann Collins, whom I thought I had lined up for these shows. I've had to skip the six Timmins shows entirely because of this. Linda's angry at me once more for having allowed this to happen. Although she's amused when I tell her that an American breeder we know says she told Scott that he should do the breed a health favor and have Honey spayed. But I don't tell her that friends at the shows are continuing to ask about her. All I've been able to say to them is that she's been "under the weather" but will be "back on her feet" soon. I hope that's so. I've discovered that she's been working hard to prepare for next week's two Great Dane specialty shows, getting a hat to conceal her hair loss, getting a fancy dress ready in which she could run with a dog. Since I haven't been able to get Stevie a handler, she's determined to show him herself. 20 August, 1999 Things have been up and down. Some days Linda seems more energetic, more verbal, and more expressive than she has been for months. Some days she's tired and depressed. But she's adamant that she'll attend the Great Dane shows tomorrow and Sunday and run with our Stevie in the ring. She wants to masquerade as healthy and "normal" to the many people there who know her. One of these will be Vicky Lanyon, the cobreeder of Stevie, with whom she had a daily e-mail correspondence until May, when the tumor made it difficult for her to type and compose sentences. Vicky and her husband, Dave, live in British Columbia, but they have come to Ontario for the specialties in their motorhome, bringing three dogs— Stevie's mom and two of his littermates. Vicky had been understandably suspicious that something was wrong when Linda's messages ceased. For a while I wrote messages pretending to be Linda. Then we convinced 87

Vicky that Linda had been upset over an illness in her family, and Linda would laboriously write her at least one brief message a week. She's also determined to go because of a disagreement we're having with the executive of the Association of Great Dane Fanciers over Seizer's eligibility for the association's 1998 Puppy of the Year award. He's going to receive the Great Dane Club of Canada's Blue Ribbon Puppy of the Year award at the joint banquet of the two Great Dane: clubs tomorrow night. He should be receiving the association's puppy award too. Back in 1998 the association's treasurer told us he would be eligible; in the fall its secretary told us he was not eligible—because his breeders, who live in Manitoba, still co-own him and are not association members. But this spring the secretary sent us an application form that implied that only one of the owners had to be "a member," and so we had applied. Shortly after Linda's radiation treatment ended, though, the treasurer told us orally that our application was going to be disallowed, and we had sent the association a sharp letter of protest. This could have been a minor matter. But Scott is vice president of the association, and his Honey is the only other contending puppy, with a little more than a third of Seizer's record 6,100 points. Linda mutters about how he had not warned us when cardiomyopathy developed in Siggie and Soren's litter and had let us go on showing Siggie weekly—he later told people proudly how Siggie's wins had enhanced the fame of his kennel—until the poor dog collapsed. She mutters about how he won a Breeder of the Year award for that litter, with its three confirmed cases of cardiomyopathy, three of cataracts, Siggie's weak thyroid, and Soren's autoimmune problems. How he's been ungracious, mean-spirited in even showing Honey against our Seizer after the bitter unhappiness we had with Siggie. I tell her that he's not like us, that he has nothing else interesting in his life but dogs. But she glares and says she doesn't understand why he'd even want the award when his puppy was so badly beaten— "Doesn't he have any pride?" Or why he would want to hurt her again by keeping the award from Seizer. 88

It's amazing what she can remember when she's angry. And how vengeful she feels. She reminds me that four of the seven members of the association executive are connected in some way with Honey—the vice president and three directors, two of whom bred Honey's sire and one who owned the sire. Maybe that's why the puppy-award rules seem to keep changing, she grumbles. It's as if these seeming persecutions have become additional metaphors for death. She couldn't keep her beloved Soren alive, but why can't she thwart what she sees as the naive and selfish ambitions of the man she believes helped kill Siggie? August 24,1999 I guess the specialties were okay. We saw a lot of friends that Linda usually sees only two or three times a year. Linda spent most of both days with the Lanyons, who had a picnic table set up under the awning of their motorhome. The association's puppy award has become a bit of a mystery. At the banquet Saturday night we all sat with Peggy Clark from Michigan. Linda was worried that Scott might want to sit near the Lanyons—back in the 19805 they had been partners in Dane breeding. But he didn't. We were presented with a small trophy by the Great Dane Club of Canada for Seizer being its Blue Ribbon Puppy of the Year. But the association award was not announced or mentioned. Linda took Stevie into the ring for the Best of Breed competition on Saturday. When the dogs did their initial circle together at a fast trot she couldn't keep up, and she kept being pulled off balance by energetic little Stevie, who could. The dogs and their handlers behind her nearly collided with each other to avoid running into her. But I don't think she noticed. She did okay when the judge asked her to trot Stevie individually across the ring and back. But on his individual circle she kept lurching off course, towards the center of the ring—I couldn't believe people weren't seeing her as drunk or sick. But no one said anything. When she got out of the ring— Stevie didn't make the final cut—she looked exhausted and disoriented. The judge that day was a local man who many people said knew too 89

many of the area breeders. His judging was, one could say, eccentric, but Seizer did win one of the two Awards of Merit. Honey won the other. On Sunday the judge was the American breeder of Honey's grandmother, so no one was surprised when she awarded Honey Best of Breed. But she also awarded Seizer the runner-up rosette for Best of Opposite. Not bad out of seventy Great Danes. Linda seems okay about it. Vicky Lanyon took Stevie into the ring for her and did a good job—made the final cut. Vicky had approached her as soon as we arrived in the morning and offered to show him, saying diplomatically that Linda had looked awfully tired with him yesterday. Linda didn't argue. George has finally replied to my July 13 note about being embarrassed at being able to talk about going on living. He says that's especially true for him when he's tempted to talk about one of his new books. Or worse, about selling their house and getting an apartment. But he says Angela actually initiates such conversations. She is devoting hours, he says, to trying to teach him about their financial affairs. I feel a twinge of envy. But he adds that she's starting to look "awfully bony." He says he spends a lot of time just holding her—telling her over and over that he loves her. I write back and tell him that Linda's not alert enough to plan much of anything and gets unrealistic ideas, like that she could show Stevie at the specialty. I tell him it was awful. That I feared we were going to have to carry her from the ring. But that, oddly, I was kinda glad she tried. I tell him that I hope Angela's starting to look light and birdlike, the way her favorite writer, Sheila Watson, used to look. I don't tell him how Linda hates being touched or comforted. Hates any hint of sentimentality. Would hate my just having romanticized Angela's thinness. August 29, 1999 Linda's discouraged that she's not feeling better. We've begun the first stage of tapering off her dexamethasone or decadron treatment. The decadron has presumably been reducing the swelling of brain tissue, whether due to pressure from the tumor or—more recently—to radiation 90

damage. Two weeks after radiation therapy ends, Dr. Macdonald has told us, swelling caused by both factors normally subsides. Linda should be able to reduce her decadron now, in weekly stages, from .5 milligrams twice a day to once a day, and then to .5 milligrams once every two days. The last step would be to discontinue. I've been asked to monitor the reduction and its effects. But even after the first week of the reduction she has seemed to be relapsing. She's again having trouble finding words for simple objects and has begun sleeping more. She's been resisting this interpretation, however, and so we we're planning to proceed to the second reduction— to .5 milligrams every other day. We've heard a rumor that Scott withdrew his application for the Great Dane Association's puppy prize the afternoon before last Saturday's banquet. September 2,1999 I'm three hundred miles away, in Cornwall, for a big dog show. When I phone home Linda seems to have difficulty understanding what I say and to have virtually no emotional response to things like our dog's wins. I talk to Mike. He tells me that she seems lethargic and apathetic in general and is sleeping even more. He thinks she should go back on the twice-aday dosage. He says he thinks he can bully her into it. September 7,1999 With the twice-a-day dosage of decadron, it took Linda only a couple of days to get back to the improved condition she'd reached at the end of the radiation treatments. When we saw Dr. Fisher today she agreed that we'd done the right thing to return to the higher dosage. She added that Linda's bad response to the decadron reduction may not mean much. That sometimes the swelling caused by radiation is slow to subside. But Linda seems to have taken the failure of the reduction as a personal one, or as a sign that the 9i

treatment hasn't worked. She is still depressed and discouraged. Yet it seems to have worked somewhat—even continuing on decadron she is doing better than she was on the same dosage before the radiation. As usual Linda was not eager to tell Dr. Fisher about her symptoms— kept minimizing them, possibly because she didn't remember them or maybe feared she was exaggerating them. Mike and I have tried to counter this reluctance by sticking as close as we can to empirical measures—how good her language is right now, how much she eats—things Linda rarely disputes and usually responds to with an "Oh, yes, that's right." It can be psychologically and ethically delicate to act as someone else's memory. Dr. Fisher, overall, was more relaxed today. She commented wryly when I mentioned that Linda seemed depressed that it was perhaps realistic in her situation to feel depressed. It was the most "human" response I've noticed in her. September n, 1999 There was a message yesterday on my answering machine, from someone with a German accent, that Angela has died. I ha.dn't heard from George since August 20.1 don't know what to do. I need to call him. I've waited a day, worrying about whether I should go out there, about when the funeral will be. I sent an e-mail to our old friend and fellow poet Lionel asking whether he knows Angela has died and what else he knows. He replies today that George has phoned him and doesn't seem in very good shape. He doesn't think there's going to be a funeral, but there will probably be a memorial service two or three weeks from now. I decide I can't wait for such a service and the crowd scene it will be. I'm going to phone George tonight and ask if it's okay for me to visit. Maybe I can stay with Lionel and avoid being an additional logistical problem for George. September 12,1999 Angela's dead, and Linda's mortally sick, yet things seem so routine. Surreally routine. I get up and make coffee, let the dogs out, take Linda the 92

first cup. Get her decadron and ranitidine from their numbered containers and take them to her. Let the dogs back in. Go back and check that she has taken the pills. There were probably similar routines with George and Angela. I phone George early in the afternoon. Someone else picks up the phone, a woman whose voice I don't recognize. George picks it up a few seconds later. He's just getting up. He sounds subdued. Says he's not sleeping well and so has been sleeping late. One of Ange's friends from out of town is staying with him and their daughter, Thea. He says there are people coming and going all day with flowers and food. Hard to keep track of. Yes, he'd welcome a visit. I tell him I'll stay with Lionel. September 17,1999 • Arrived in Vancouver last night around eleven, picked up the rental car I had reserved, and drove over to Lionel and Gerri's. They live on Charles Street, across the park from the house on William Street where Linda grew up. It was demolished about ten years ago to expand the playing fields of her old high school, Britannia. And as part of a slum renewal. But the two huge acacia trees in her front yard, the ones she used to play in, are still there. I can see them from Lionel's porch. There's an alternative-theater festival in the park, disturbing the addicts that have been shooting up there since Linda was young. Linda's mother now lives a couple of blocks away in a shabby yellow cottage on Semlin Drive. It's her birthday on Sunday. I wonder if I can find time to drop by. But I'd have to lie about how Linda is. Lionel was up waiting for me. Gerri's in California for a couple of days—she's a high-flying owner of a computer software business. Attractive, happy, witty, and frenetically energetic—whenever I see her, at least—and with a Shakespeare PhD. Lionel, about fifteen years older than her, seems in love just watching her rush about. Lionel himself is rushing this morning when I get up—he's off to hunt down a bargain all-in-one tool that acts as a bench saw, drill press, sander, planer, and lathe. I ask 93

him if it makes coffee. He grins and tells me I will have l:o make my own. Later he's going to have a practice with his hockey team. He's sixty and the team's leading scorer. I phone George around ten and ask if he's ready for a visitor. He sounds normal enough. "Come on over," he says. "Bring your suitcase." Angela's friend left last night. I drive across 25th Avenue to Arbutus and up to a liquor store with a fine-wines section. I find several good Umbrian reds from the remarkable 1997 vintage. Gerri phoned Lionel late last night and asked if I could find us a good red—like Linda and me, she loves red wine, but Lionel doesn't. I buy three bottles. When I get to George's he and Thea are sitting at the kitchen table in their pajamas. His pajamas always look like my shirts, or vice versa, says George. We sit around the table drinking coffee, talking about whatever was in the morning paper. Then we switch to beer. Around midafternoon they tell me how, on the day of her death, some of Angela's distant relatives had phoned—relatives who were visiting Canada and didn't know she was ill. They wanted to talk to her about family genealogy. Angela was weak and in pain, but she seemed no worse to George and Thea than on any other recent day. She wanted to see the relatives. They came, and after an hour or so Angela was suddenly very ill. George called an ambulance. Thea remembers that while they were waiting she talked to the relatives and simultaneously thought, "Here I am entertaining strangers while my mother is dying." The ambulance crew examined Angela and told George and Thea that they had better ride with her to the hospital. George says that I have to help eat up all the food people have been bringing. He hauls some chili out of the fridge and begins microwaving. It's the evening of a weekly gathering of young writers at a Robson Street pub—Shenanigans. Thea wants to go, and George thinks it would be a good idea to go too. We take a city bus down so we don't have to worry about how much we drink. Shenanigans is a large techno -rock pub patronized mainly by animated young Koreans who dance or crowd around the dance floor. George and Thea's friends are sitting at a table in the front, 94

at some remove from the loud music. I don't remember much about what was said. I remember looking wistfully at the distant dance floor, wishing I had a young woman with me and we were dancing. Afterward we walk in a straggly group along Robson towards the bus stops on Granville. Reminds me of similar walks in my college days. Thea window shops as we progress, at one point crossing the street in midblock to search for a CD in a shop that's still open. September 18,1999 I'm the first one up, at around 8:30.1 get the newspaper from the front porch and take it to the kitchen. George made coffee at dinner yesterday then switched off the pot. I microwave some of it—it's pretty good. I've sat in this kitchen a lot over the years, often like this, up first, reading George's paper. It's midmorning in London, so I phone Mike and ask him how things are. Pretty much the same, he says. George comes down and makes fresh coffee, then Thea conies to remind George that one of Angela's gardening friends is going to come over at eleven to help them plant Angela's latest vine. Angela had been looking for this vine for several years and had discovered it a couple of months ago in a gardening catalog. George ordered it for her, hoping to surprise her. It arrived a couple of days ago. Angela was a legendary gardener, spending tens of thousands of dollars to relandscape and plant every square inch of the large lot around their house—often to George's dismay. He used to call the garden "Versailles," and joke that I could probably see its foliage rising from where I was in Ontario. She employed a crew of gardeners year-round to keep it in shape. It's a pleasantly sunny day. We wander with the friend through the arbors and around the pools. George speculates about how he'll be able to maintain them. The friend doesn't think the current gardening crew has done much for what Angela was paying them. She points to areas that need pruning or weeding. She also doesn't think the vine is the one Angela had been seeking. But we find a spot and plant it anyway. 95

When the friend leaves we decide to drive over to the university. Thea has been arranging to have a memorial service held for Angela in the formal gardens there. George wants to see the spot. From there we wander on foot around the campus. Forty years before, George, Angela, Lionel, and I were students here. Many of the buildings from that time are still here, although now they belong to different departments, or are hidden behind more recent construction. Except for the army hut where George and I and others started our poetry newsletter, Tish. George shows Thea the spot where he first met Angela and where the bus stop was where they met for their first date. We find the room where the Tish poets gave their first poetry reading and the window at Brock Hall through which we passed "borrowed" mimeograph paper for printing the fifth issue. It being Sunday the campus is very quiet—making it more possible to imagine the past. We find an open-air pub near Brock Hall and sit down for a beer. George jokes that there was nothing like this on campus when we were students—that for a beer we had to take an hour-long bus ride downtown. Linda was on these grounds too, when she was seventeen and eighteen, wondering what she was going to do in her life now that she had dropped out of school and abandoned her brief ballet career to work for the provincial auto club. She came to readings by Ferlinghetti, Creeley, Olson, Ginsberg, Duncan, the young Tish poets. George and I are going to have dinner with Lionel and Gerri. Gladys Hindmarch, another old student friend from the Tish days, will be there too. We can't persuade Thea to come. When we see Gladys her head is bald. I remember that I've heard something about her and breast cancer. She's been having radiation therapy as preparation for surgery. None of us talks much about that, or about Angela. September 24,1999 We've been in a relatively quiet period. Linda's illness seems to have— on balance—stabilized since I returned from Vancouver. Her language has come back slightly—she's able to carry on simple conversations. 96

Someone who doesn't know her well might not realize anything is amiss. More interestingly, her sense of humor has returned, and a wider range of personality. She can relax and carry on a conversation for the pleasure of it. She's begun reading the front section of the Globe again in the mornings. Doesn't take her long, though. She gets up now before me, lets the dogs out, brings the newspaper in, makes herself some coffee. Just before the radiation she was unable to even glance at a paper and had almost no idea about current news stories. Now she makes comments on the Turkish earthquake, the progress in the Swissair crash investigation, the Pinochet extradition case. But she's unhappy that her right arm continues to be weak, that her vision continues to be dim, and that she tires so easily. She's stopped having Mike or me take her grocery shopping, so he or I do it alone. Part of her reticence about going out may be due to her hair loss, a well-defined circle from her front hairline back about three inches. George has written. He says it has been two weeks now, and he is "still paralyzed." I haven't been writing him letters, but I have been regularly e-mailing him corny jokes that I find on the Internet. I write back and tell him that his paralysis may well be exhaustion, but, regardless, it is probably a good strategy for buying himself "space and time." I don't know if that's true, but it sounds like a plausible thing to write. Maybe it's me that would like space and time. October 4,1999 I get an invitation by e-mail today from Ken Norris to be a plenary speaker at the biannual conference of the National Poetry Foundation, to be held June 30 to July 3 in Orono, Maine. It jolts me with its reminder that I am a writer as well as relied-upon husband and show-dog owner. I write back immediately to accept, although I have no idea what my circumstances will be that weekend. I can't even warn Ken that Linda's health might affect my participation, since she doesn't want anyone to know about her illness, and although I know him fairly well I don't know him well enough to trust him with word about it. And of course it's also, 97

like every other summer weekend, a dog-show weekend, usually the fourday Sarnia show, set up to attract Canadian and U.S. exhibitors over the double national holidays. What if Linda wants me to have one of our dogs there? What if the judges are good for one of them? The conference is titled "The Opening of the Field," and it is to be about Canadian and American poetry of the 19605. Or "American and Canadian," as the organizers are phrasing it. A retrospective, undoubtedly, one already partly written by the choice of Robert Duncan's 1961 poetry collection title as its banner. Calling me back to 1960,1961,1962, to that University of British Columbia campus I was on three weeks ago, and again to George's Angela, whom he met in 1962 while both of us were closely reading Duncan's book. And to young Linda, also, who, unknown to me, was reading Tish at Duthie's bookshop as fast as we were writing it, and who, in the summer of 19 63, was somewhere in the audience of the university's Vancouver Poetry Conference for Duncan's reading and his lecture. For me, one of the most wonderful things about Linda was that she or I could make jokes that depended on a knowledge of Duncan's poetry, or John Donne's, or Homer's, or Irving Layton's, and the other would always get the joke. I have misgivings about this conference, and not just because of Linda and because openings imply closings. Something did "open" in North American poetry in 19 60, a way to a more socially integrated and relevant writing, which George's writing and mine have been a part of. But I'm not sure of where that opening has led, or that congratulations or nostalgia have been earned. Reactionary nonpolitical poetries have returned, along with narrowly political poetries that naively overlook the built-in political biases of language. The most politically and linguistically effective of my fellow poets, like Daphne Marlatt and Marlene Nourbese Philip, are little honored, while flashy self-promoting hacks like Susan Musgrave, Pat Lane, and Gary Geddes are accepted as "important." My own poems are read and taught mainly in India, Britain, and the ex-Yugoslavia, where Canadian literary politics have less chance to suppress them. Maybe some 98

of this is our fault. Maybe there's been more death and forgetting and failure than we've noticed. Or has Frank been too frank? Which he'll probably be again at Orono. October 5,1999 I can't take Linda to her i P.M. appointment today with Dr. Fisher and Dr. Macdonald to find out about her MRI scan. The appointment is at the same time as my undergrad Canadian lit class. As my department chair has pointed out, several of my colleagues would be willing to teach a class for me on such occasions if they knew the situation Linda and I were in. But Linda still doesn't want people to know. Mike is going to take her. I tell him what questions I'm hoping the doctors will answer, and I describe for him how the tumor looked on the first MRI scan in case he gets to look only at the recent one. I tell him I'll carry my cell phone with me in case the doctors need to speak with me, or in case the appointment's delayed and there's a chance I can get to it. So much "in case." When I get home, around 2:30, they are not yet back. My cell phone hasn't rung. I check the answering machine. There's no message. At four they are still not back. I try to do a little work and not think about them. They get back at 4:30, and all Linda wants to talk about is what we'll have for supper and that she's forgotten to inquire at the Cancer Center about where to get a wig. While we are still milling around with the dogs, who are there as usual to welcome everyone and sniff out where people have been, Mike says that the MRI wasn't good. Linda says, "Let Mike tell you about it. I don't remember much about the details." The MRI showed the tumor to be about the same size, although most of its mass is probably inactive as a result of the radiation. But, unlike in the first scan, a small patch of it reacted strongly to the dye that was introduced to it during the scan. The dark staining indicates a fast-growing, possibly high-grade, and certainly much more dangerous type of tumor cell. The tumor is no longer homogenous; a minute part, at the edge on one end, seems to have mutated as a result of the radiation. Mike suggests to me 99

that this is likely a part that received less radiation than did most of the tumor and thus has had a chance to recover and respond—that when radiation is given from several different angles, with paths that overlap primarily in the tumor area, some part will inevitably receive less overlap than others. Apparently Dr. Fisher was visibly upset while giving Linda this news. Her reticent, awkward manner with patients, her reluctance to give many details, is evidently not just a matter of medical practice but also her own emotional response. Mike says that he felt at once from how upset she seemed that Linda's new situation is very serious. After a half-hour wait, Dr. Macdonald had come to see her, confirming what Dr. Fisher had reported and suggesting that Linda needed to make a decision at once about her treatment. She has three choices, he said: do nothing, have another biopsy to discover what type of tumor cells the mutated ones are, or begin chemotherapy at once, using chemical agents known to affect most tumor types. He indicated that some patients prefer not to go through chemotherapy, since it can be unpleasant and in most cases only delays death. But it can also improve quality of life, particularly if the patient doesn't suffer many side effects from the therapy. A biopsy would present the same risks as the earlier biopsy but allow more precise treatment. And Linda will likely have to undergo a second biopsy at some point even if she chooses to proceed with a generalized chemotherapy now: eventually the tumor will stop responding to the general agents— procrustine, lomustine, and procarbazine—and he will need to know the exact tumor type in order to make a new prescription. Linda decided to proceed with generalized chemotherapy. Dr. Macdonald gave her pamphlets about the three chemicals, their possible side effects and dietary implications, and sent her to the hematology lab for blood tests. If her blood levels are okay she will begin the chemotherapy on Thursday. No wonder she forgot to ask about wigs. After Linda goes to the kitchen to think about supper, I ask Mike if she's made the right decision. He shrugs—as if there m.ay be no "right" 100

decisions. He thinks Linda is now in a similar situation to patients who have tumors surgically removed and then undergo chemotherapy—the category of patient about whom there is the most research information. These patients usually live from eight months to two and a half years. Linda goes about preparing supper cheerfully, as if she's decided that this new development is all part of the expected course of things and not worth fretting about. I go down to our cellar and bring up a 1990 Pauillac to accompany the steak and chips she is preparing. October 7,1999 Today is the start of Linda's chemotherapy. It's still a shock to me that it is starting so quickly. I'm not very good at this—I notice that I associate chemotherapy with death—with people who go bald, thin, weak, and then die; with frail, gray-haired shapes barely visible on stretchers at the sides of the Cancer Center corridors; with the patients with canes, walkers, wheelchairs whom I've seen struggling to the center's chemotherapy station. It's the one corner of the center I've resisted looking at. Some days, when I've been waiting for Linda to come out of the radiation rooms, I've walked around the center looking for a newspaper to read. The last place I've searched in has been the chemotherapy station, with its gray, wasted patients. Even then I've avoided looking at them, as if looking might invite contagion. At least mental contagion. "Don't stare," my mother used to say when I was a child, before Medicare, before atomic radiation and people with cancer-rotted faces or huge hanging goiters were commonplace on a Canadian street. We had to go to the Cancer Center at 9 A.M., which was okay for me, because I didn't have to teach until two. It was cool today—the first morning that there's been any sign of frost. Linda put on her long mink coat. She didn't really need it for warmth, one of her winter jackets would have done. I thought she was making a statement—that once upon a time she was elegant, she could walk straight, she had hair. Of course she had to take it off once we were in the atrium of the Cancer Center, and it became 101

a burden I had to carry along as we moved from one area to another. We began with a meeting with Dr. Macdonald's nurse, who hadn't yet figured out that Linda'd been briefed about the chemotherapy drugs on Monday and had had her necessary blood tests. We remembered to ask her about wigs, and she offered to meet us later, after Linda's visit to the chemotherapy station, and take us down to the wig room, where one can borrow a wig as if it were a library book. The usual twenty minutes passed between her leaving and Dr. Macdonald's arrival. For Linda, whose patience is now in even shorter supply than it was before she became ill, these minutes seemed like years. After five minutes she began slowly pacing the room. "He's never coming," she said. After another two she picked up her coat. "This is outrageous," she said. "I'm going home." Rather than arguing with her I let her go. I didn't think she would get far. After a short wait I peeked outside. She was standing indecisively at the far end of the hallway. I peeked out again. She was looking at the large electronic scale halfway down the hallway. A few minutes later she came back and sat down as if nothing had happened. I began chattering to her nonstop, about Sara, about the lack of magazines in the room, about grocery shopping, and I kept it up until the doctor arrived. Dr. Macdonald went over the chemotherapy regimen step-by-step—the injection of vincristine that she would have later this morning and that would last for the two-week period; the lomustine pills, with their potential for extreme nausea, that she would take this evening, accompanied by a powerful and expensive antinausea pill, ondansetron. He gave us a calendar marked pill by pill, and on the back he wrote more step-by-step instructions. I thought to myself that he must have quite a few patients or families that mess up. He reminded us of her dietary restrictions during the course of procarbazine—no cheese or alcohol. Dr. Macdonald shakes our hands as he leaves. We then have to go to the chemotherapy station for Linda's vincristine injection. Another wait. Linda checks out the magazines on the nearby table, but there's nothing 102

that interests her. I wonder what sort of magazine would interest her. There are a lot of travel magazines and women's makeover magazines in the Cancer Center, the latter with articles like "How to Really Arouse Your Man," which seem bizarre in such a context. I take Linda's lomustine, procarbazine, and ondansetron prescriptions to the center's pharmacy, just down the hall, where Dr. Macdonald has said the pills will be waiting. They're not waiting—they've just arrived and are yet to be processed. Fifteen minutes pass. I go back to check on the prescriptions—it would be nice to have them before Linda's injection, since right after she will be going to the wig room on the lower level. The pills have still not been processed, but they offer to do them right away. Dr. Macdonald's nurse drops by and is surprised that Linda has not yet had her injection. She can't stay, and she says she will get a Cancer Society volunteer to come over in ten minutes or so to take us to the wig room. I wonder about these volunteers. What moves them to be here, a place I'd like to be a thousand miles from? I've seen the signs—"reserved for volunteers"—on their parking places, but I haven't yet met one. A nurse with a clipboard comes out and pages Linda for her injection. My gut feeling is that this is the beginning of something very bad, but Linda greets her cheerfully and trundles off with her. It amazes me how she seems to have strength when she needs it. The volunteer arrives just before Linda comes back out. I don't have a chance to ask Linda about the injection. We go down to the wig room, where, the volunteer tells us, there are about a hundred wigs that have been donated to the center, some by patients or their families when they no longer need them. I try not to think about why. She leaves us to look them over. About forty percent are Marilyn Monroe blond. Another forty percent are gray and faux chic, mimicking short, razor-cut hair. Linda's hair has been a rich chestnut—a bright Irish auburn that has always contrasted sharply with her light complexion. Most of the remaining wigs are brunette-—there are only a couple that remotely approach Linda's color. We settle on one that has short curls all over, with a hint of red, but much 103

darker than Linda's own hair. It actually looks good—I'm reminded that in the late sixties and early seventies, when wigs were fashion items, Linda had worn a blond wig with similar curls. She looks younger and happier. We take the elevator back upstairs. The prescriptions are at last ready. October 12,1999 Was up at North Bay over the weekend for the Nipissing dog show. Linda wanted Seizer at the show to cause more trouble for Scott in his quest to make his Honey number one Canadian Dane. Each time we enter Seizer it costs Scott money—he hires a handler because he seems to have no confidence that he can beat Seizer if he handles Honey himself. Linda knows Scott's not rich—he works for an automotive paint company and has five children to support from two earlier marriages. She relishes thinking of how financially stretched we may be making him. I often wonder if he's worth all her attention. But she has few such pleasures. Got back late last night. I kept Linda posted about my progress driving back—it's about a six-hour drive, and the returning Thanksgiving weekend traffic was fast-moving but dense and dangerous. Most lanes of the 400 and 401 were filled bumper-to-bumper but moving at sixty-five to seventy-five miles per hour with sudden drastic slowdowns. She had a roast of beef with Yorkshire pudding waiting for me when I arrived. Probably my favorite meal these days, and one she can still make after all these years pretty well reflexively. She was wearing her new wig. I felt guilty about drinking half a bottle of wine when she can't drink any, but she insisted that her roasts are so good they deserve wine. She's right. I've had no word from George in the past three weeks—since he wrote that he was "paralyzed." I worry that he may be shutting down, but my Dane friend Karen has sent me more jokes by e-mail, and so I forward the best of these to him. October 14,1999 I was sipping my wine after dinner tonight and watching Linda play with the remains of the wild rice she had cooked with our roast duck. 104

Maybe the French wine reminded me of the numerous driving tours we had made together in France—through the Loire, through Brittany, twice through Bordeaux, once through the Dordogne. Those had been special times, when everything we encountered was a shared interest, when every navigational mistake became a welcome adventure into an interesting place. I found myself quietly saying how much I was going to miss going back to Bordeaux with her, strolling through the narrow streets of Saint Emilion, having dinner in some obscure but wonderful restaurant. I was going to say more. I thought of George telling Ange over and over that he loved her. I wanted to tell Linda one last time how much I had enjoyed those moments with her. Or maybe I just wanted to feel sorry for myself. I don't know. Anyway, Linda was instantly very upset. She told me to stop. That there were so many such things that she didn't dare think about any. I think I understand. Linda has always seemed at her happiest traveling in Europe. We would usually fly there separately, me several days ahead to attend a conference. We would agree to meet in a particular place. Twice it was a bench in the Tuileries. Another time it was 8 A.M. in the lineup at the Grand Palais for the last day of the Gauguin exhibition. She embraced me extravagantly, to the amusement of others in the line to whom she had been talking, in French, about expecting her husband. Another time it was the city gates of Chester—I'd been speaking at a conference in Leeds, a city that she mistakenly thought uninteresting. Another time it was in York, a quaint stone hotel in the old city, where I enquired after "Mrs. Davey" and was told she was waiting for me in an even quainter fifteenth-century pub next door. Yet another time it was a sunny street in Nice—I had flown in from Leeds and rented a car. I parked near her hotel and began walking, and then I heard her calling to me from a bougainvillea-decked balcony. Once it was the Nice waiting room at Charles de Gaulle Airport. This time I'd flown from a multiculturalism conference in Germany, where she would never go. She said she'd feel sick with horror and shame and memory to be on a German train or street. I'd coordinated my flight from Cologne with 105

one she and Sara had taken from Toronto. She delighted in the romance of these meetings, particularly the ones in the Tuileries or at the Grand Palais, and she recounted them to our friends. I'm going to have to avoid that bench at the Tuileries. We had special arrangements for driving in Europe. She would drive in Britain, where she had little difficulty with right-hand drive, and in Italy, where she relished the spirited and inventive style of the drivers, who could create two lanes out of one, three out of two, five out of three. She said I was too cautious to drive safely there. I drove in France, where I felt the most at home, and in Yugoslavia, where she mistrusted the police. We shared the driving in Turkey, Spain, and Greece. She was driving at her usual seventy-five miles an hour, circling Mount Parnassus on the way to Delphi, when we were hit by lightning and our Toyota's electrical system roasted. Sara thought we must be dead, because that's what happens to people who are struck by lightning. I love remembering even these awful moments. But I still hunger to remember them with her. October 16,1999 A message from George today. A report. He and Thea have been to Angela's parents' old farm near Courtenay. They spread most of her ashes there and then spent three or four days visiting his old college friend Mike Matthews and his wife on Protection Island. George will know the history of that naming. He says the trip was tough, but it was even harder coming home. Sara came in from Toronto last night in a car that she'd rented. Our two dogs went rushing to meet her. They think she should be here all the time. Linda was weary. She'd stayed up most of the day cooking a chicken cacciatore for Sara's arrival. Cutting chicken fillets from a mess of breasts that had been in our freezer and blanching and peeling the tomatoes that are still growing and ripening in our garden. Mike and Sara and I ate voraciously, but Linda left most of the food on her plate I added it to the 106

dogs' kibble, which they then gobbled completely. Even though she'd put on a lot of weight a couple of months ago while first on steroids, her not eating isn't good. Chemotherapy makes the body susceptible to infection, and she needs all the vitamins and minerals she can swallow. October 17,1999 Today at breakfast Linda is very weak and shaky. Her right hand trembles as she sips her coffee, as she counts out eight milk of magnesia pills. Mike and Sara and I spent much of last night talking about the difficulty of knowing whether this weakness and her returning memory difficulties are symptoms of the tumor or side effects of the chemotherapy. Increasingly, she is having difficulty completing sentences again, or remembering what she had been going to say when she began the sentence. This morning, for instance, she began asking "What time ..." and then stopped. I had two things happening today—Peter Bartl would be calling in around noon on his way back to Edmonton to pick up a carton of the "Eye-Rhymes" visual poetry issue of Open Letter, which he had helped edit, and at 2:30 Seizer was scheduled to compete at the local dog show. I tried both these answers as she sat there looking puzzled. It was neither of these she'd wanted to ask about. It was what time Sara had got home last night—she'd driven to an afternoon wedding in Brantford and got back from the reception just around 11:30. Linda had gone to sleep right after dinner, at around seven. Her memory has been inconsistent. Yesterday she didn't remember from last week that her Great Dane breeder friend from Atlanta, Jackie Dilworth, was in London for the dog show, although I had told her the day before, and although she seemed to remember that Jackie had been at the Nipissing show last weekend. She also couldn't remember what month it was—she thought it might be November. I jokingly pointed out that we hadn't yet had Hallowe'en. In some ways it seems like I am losing part of my own memory—she used to remember so many things for me. I once joked to George that she was a kind of McLuhanesque extension of 107

my nervous system—helping me sort out books I was writing, reminding me of my mother's birthday, remembering that I was planning to propose a paper to a conference in Paris. Maybe that's why I missed her so much when we were parted. Now I am pleased if she remembers her own pills. Mike thinks that the chemotherapy, while probably causing lethargy, is unlikely to be causing the recurrence of the language difficulties and memory losses. He thinks she should be better than this at this stage in the therapy, if the therapy is working. The tumor cells shouldn't be growing, he thinks, while the chemotherapy agents are attacking them. He's worried that the mutated tumor may be of a type that is resistant to these chemicals. Presumably we won't find that out until the next MRI scan, which isn't planned until about three months from now—that is, after two two-week courses of chemotherapy. Last night, while Sara was away and Mike was out, I suggested we have spaghetti for dinner because we had sauce in the freezer. Linda baked some ready-to-bake buns for garlic bread while boiling water for the noodles and microwaving the sauce. When the noodles were ready she called me, handing me a plateful to put sauce onto and then preparing her own plate. As I was squeezing past a curious Stevie to Leave the kitchen, she said to me "Do you have the garlic bread?" I was puzzled—I could smell it browning behind her in the oven, under the broiler, so I said "No, it's still in the oven." I realized later that she'd probably asked me the wrong question—she probably wanted to ask me if I would get the garlic bread. I misunderstood—she's always been such a precise speaker. She shrugged unhappily, opened the oven, and began trying to remove the buns with her bare right hand while still holding her pla.te with the left. I didn't really see this because I couldn't quite see past: Stevie and also couldn't get past him to help. I think she was probably frustrated by her inability to ask me to get the bread from the oven. She could have set her plate on the counter. She could have used one of the oven mitts that are kept in a drawer to the right of the stove. Her spaghetti noodles and sauce slid from her plate onto the oven door. She contemplated the mess on the 108

door and her empty plate for a moment without comment then put the four pieces of garlic bread onto the plate, took them into the dining room, and sat down. I was still in the kitchen. "What are you going to do?" I called, trying to keep Stevie from eating her spaghetti from the hot oven door. "I'm just not going to eat," she said. I told her, "Hey, there's no big problem!"—I'd cook more noodles and share my plateful with her. I quickly moved to a new plate a portion from mine equivalent to what she'd lost and put some more sauce on top. She cheered up and ate it all. She even ate all of a piece of garlic bread, although half way through she accused one of the dogs of having eaten some of it, not being able to believe she'd eaten so much so quickly. Tonight Sara returned to Toronto. She'll come back Friday. I feel desolate every Sunday night when she leaves. I feel similarly whenever Mike leaves for a weekend of camping, and I used to feel that way when Linda was still practicing law and would leave on a Sunday night to return to a week at her practice. I'm like a dog that's distressed by the absence of a pack member. George must feel his house is very empty. No wonder he seems not to like returning to it. October 18,1999 I dreamed last night that I was flying a light airplane with Linda as my passenger. We are over a city, following an expressway and looking for "Highway 72," which should be branching off to the right. The city is sprawling, dense, and grimly industrial. All at once I realize that there is a grid of hydroelectric wires high over the city, strung on towers that must be a thousand feet high. We are flying under this grid, and from it descend other wires that connect with a grid beneath us. I have swooped low to look at the highway signs, and now I must bank sharply and gain altitude to the right to begin weaving our way to safety through a grid of wires that I had not realized was so dense. When I wake up I am depressed by how transparent the dream is.

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October 19,1999 Linda's been better the last couple of days, ever since; Sara went back. She gets so excited when Sara is coming, anxious about what to cook, and she keeps herself awake more while she is here. She's looking forward to the end of this course of chemotherapy—there are only three more days, and today will be the first that she takes three of the procarbazine pills. The "three" dosage has become symbolic for her of the end of the course. Then two days without pills but with continued dietary restrictions. Then on Saturday she will be able once again to have ice cream, to have Bovril in her gravy, to have her fill of tea and coffee, to drink wine . . . Today the Governor General's Awards nominations arrive on my fax machine from the Canada Council. The poets are yet another list of nonentities. More sad, sentimental lyric songsters, every nominated title containing old humanist images—bridge, road, birds, breath, wish, winter, songs, earth. Irony: the nineteenth century arrives by fax. "Fuck them," I mutter, "and their goddamn irrelevancies." Books from the "prize-winning poem" genre nominated by jurors who are other irrelevant "prize-winning poets." It almost makes dog-show judging look unproblematic. October 22,1999 Linda took her last procarbazine pills for this stage last night. I phoned her to make sure. I'm in Belleville for a three-day show weekend. Seizer beat Scott's bitch for Breed today, but did poorly in Group, probably because he had to poop. He started to poop in the ring and then stopped and held it until he was back outside. Scott had to show Honey himself— his handler is gone for the winter and his friend Donna, who sometimes handles for him, has driven to California to watch the U.S. National Great Dane show. Scott looked gloomy, but then he often looks gloomy these days. A mutual friend has told us that Scott's now saying that he wishes "all this were over." Well he knows how to end it—he and his short-legged bitch could stay home. He has no idea how soon it may be over for Linda. I left yesterday hi such a rush that I forgot to bring up the two bottles no

of wine Linda wanted from the cellar for her first postchemotherapy treats. In the Toronto Star today there are several articles about cancer and cancer treatments. There's a "great brains" conference at the University of Toronto. One headline notes that current cancer treatments are "crude" and the current treatment situation "desperate." The article quotes researchers as hoping to be able to "reverse cancers" or kill tumors by shutting off their blood supply in the near future. The near future seems to be about ten years away. Another article says that human-genome researchers in Vancouver are close to unraveling chromosome 22. Its genes govern a number of things, including brain tumors. "Unraveling" seems to mean identifying most of its sequences—all but "six or seven gaps." A third article is written by a woman whose mother is dying of myeloma—there's an editor's note that she died shortly after the article was written. The woman writes that she had "excellent care." October 23,1999 Slept until eight this morning, waking from strange dreams. In one Linda and I seem to be back at our house on Lyndhurst Avenue in Toronto, which we moved from in 1990. We seem to be building a new garage, which is something Linda and I actually did there. But the lot is much bigger, and the old garage is in much better shape, and I seem to be spending most of my time there while Mike, who was only a child on Lyndhurst, is a man and is working at finishing the brightly lit interior of the new garage. There is a freezer in the old garage that won't plug in properly and that I seem to have forgotten about, although I knew about the problem some days ago. It is half full of frozen vegetables, mostly large commercial bags of corn and some smaller packages of green vegetables in a shelf in its lid. I wonder if they are still okay and if I should just quietly transfer them to the freezers in the new garage. There is also a pair of game hens that I bought only a couple of days ago and bizarrely put into this freezer. They will undoubtedly be spoiled. I decide to discreetly clean out the freezer and in

put its contents in the garbage. I look around the garage and see two-byfours and other things nailed or screwed loosely to the wall. I look for a hammer with which to pull out the nails. Not finding one, I ask Sara, who is passing through, to see if there's one in the new garage. She finds and brings me one, and I pull out two nails and bring down the two-by-four. Then I pry out what I think is a large nail but which turns out to be a very large drill bit. It seems to speak to me, reminding me of how much I planned to do with it when I acquired it, and now it is rusty and bent. I wake and remember the freezer and in my confusion think it is real and that I have actually wasted all these vegetables. I am angry, and I then remember that it is only a dream and fall asleep and redream an image of the freezer with many fewer vegetables in it. Then I dream that I have for some reason left Seizer with Sara in Toronto and have forgotten him there. I ask her about him. She says he is losing weight. He is sleeping in a playhouse at the rear of the house where she lives. I feel I have screwed up. Then I dream I am walking down a street in New York with an attractive young blond woman whom I know in my waking life—she's short, beautifully proportioned, and entirely naked. She is oblivious to her nudity, as are the people we pass. I look over at her more closely and realize she is wearing a very tiny light blue bikini. I long to take her somewhere and make love to her. I have difficulties deciding whether these dreams belong here. In the unconscious all dreams are relevant, but in life or in books one selects. There is not room here to record Linda's every gesture or word, or every thought I have about her. I have to select. I try to be conscientious, but might there be a pattern in what I leave out, and what do those omissions tell me? I keep asking myself this as I write. With dreams, we tend to forget or repress the most troubling or perhaps most relevant ones. Like my going back and redreaming a less-full freezer. If I leave any of these dreams out, does that mean they truly belong? Is Linda the freezer I have carelessly left unplugged? And am I the rusty drill bit who yearns for a young blond lover? Am I already both blaming myself for Linda's predica112

ment and dreaming of leaving her behind? I don't want to believe these things of myself. Besides, my dreaming self is not all of my self—what I do and what I decide to do is also, and much more, me. Yet, as I wrote to George when Angela was dying and Linda was becoming increasingly wordless, it has not only been hard to plan ahead but I've also felt guilty about even thinking ahead. Of where I might move if she dies. Of walking down the street with another woman, however dressed. I still try not to mention the word "future" to Linda, or to say anything to her to remind her that I may have a future beyond hers. October 26,1999 When I got back from Belleville late Sunday afternoon Linda had changed yet again—she was lively, perceptive, energetic, edgy, sometimes aggressively defensive. Mike muttered to me, "Watch your tongue," and he later said that he thought the recent chemotherapy must have had a considerable effect on the tumor. It struck me also that she had a lot more stamina now that this round of chemotherapy had ended. She had made coq au vin for him and Sara Saturday night. Last night she sent me out for Atlantic salmon fillets and cheddar cheese—one of the foods she couldn't eat during the chemotherapy—so she could make scalloped potatoes from scratch. She said she had a craving for both and was hungry for the first time in weeks. Her vocabulary is much larger, although she still has intermittent word gaps—she comes to a point in a sentence and a common word isn't there. She has had to be reminded to take her decadron pill at each meal since I got back, but I think this is because she feels so good, not because she is forgetful. She is forgetting she is ill. Already there are carved pumpkins on some of the neighbor's porches. The house across the street sports a ghost hanging on its door knocker. I find it bizarre that people want to turn Hallowe'en into a season. Mystery requires suddenness. Our pumpkin is usually carved late afternoon on October 31, appears around 5:30, and has vanished by 9 P.M. Boo. These are probably the same people who put their Christmas lights up in H3

November and leave them up and shining into early March. Christmas Day! When there is too much foreshadowing there may be nothing to cast shadows. October 27,1999 I dreamed last night that I was at George's house. The rooms are bare and tidy, as if part of a museum. The top drawer of a dresser is open, showing a dozen or more small white purses or evening bags arrayed. They are all similar in shape, longer than they are wide, square at the bottom, but sloping inward halfway up the sides. They appear to evolve, from simple to slightly larger and more complex. In the dream I associate them with young, gregarious Angela, with parties and dinners. When I wake up I remember thinking when I visited George after her death how much Angela's personality was stamped on their house;. In most rooms every object seemed to have been carefully selected by her. How easy it seemed for time to stand still now that she was no longer there to add or change things. But I've left out the rest of the dream. In the same upstairs room where I see the purses, I am distracted by quarreling cats. There's a female—black and white to begin with, mostly black later—who is beating up the other cats. There's a large, longhaired black Eaale who doesn't especially want to fight. He pretends to charge at her, trying to keep her away from him. She maniacally attacks him, chewing on his back leg. I push them apart with my right foot and shoo her away. Ouch. Quarrels, sometimes public, were part of George and Angela's life too, especially years ago. And mine and Linda's. Dramatic, consuming quarrels, which in this dream I distort in his favor, my favor. Sometimes these quarrels had a lot to do with purses and their gender symbolism, This morning I notice that I forgot to change the videotape in Linda's VCR last night and that nothing was taped for her overnight. However, I doubt that Linda will notice.

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October 28,1999 A distressing dream last night. I'm in my parents' house in Abbotsford, British Columbia, as it was before they renovated it in the 19505. I'm with another man, possibly my dad's brother, or maybe my dad. A stranger has been trying to break in and we're trying to keep him out, punching him, pushing him. He is powerfully built, has blond woolly hair, and is wearing a silvery-gray turtleneck and slacks. We drive him from my parents' bedroom window, on the ground floor overlooking the front steps, but he gets in my bedroom window at the back. We grapple with him in the hallway, but we are afraid of his strength. His gray slacks appear to be scales, and the end of one of his legs is a metal hook with which he lashes out at us. My companion decides we should flee out the back door. I think this is a bad idea, that we are safer attacking him at close quarters in the house than we are outside. It's a small house, with very small rooms. The intruder follows us out and disappears. My companion now has a fishing pole and casts out a line, commenting that our assailant may be hungry. I decide to go back in, and my uncle or dad follows. I latch the screen door, although I realize it is flimsy thing, then close the back door. But our assailant is already back in the house. My companion rushes to grapple with him—I realize I am close enough to have stabbed him if I had my hunting knife. They wrestle back into my parents' bedroom. A cadaverous old man comes down from upstairs—he resembles Mr. Barrett, the old postmaster, who lived across the street when I was a child—and he joins the fight. I go and get my hunting knife, the Sheffield steel one that I bought with my allowance money when I was ten. It has a sharp, wide, six-inch blade. I go to the bedroom and sneak behind the intruder and, with my knife still hidden on my belt beneath my shirt, pretend to stab him. He laughs at me. His turtleneck shirt has become bare gray skin. The struggle continues. He seems to be toying with us, until he trips and falls awkwardly on his stomach in the narrow space between the bed and my mother's dresser. I leap upon him and stab him carefully and violently in the back on the left side where I imagine his heart must be. I H5

wrench the knife out and stab again, feeling the blade slip between ribs. I pull it out and stab again, creating a pattern of wounds that I think must include his heart. He keeps trying to get up. I stab again, and twist this time aiming for his spinal cord. He is quieter. I stab again and saw back and forth with the blade. He seems dead, but maybe the wounds will magically heal. Maybe he will come back to life. I decide I have to cut off his head, so I stab him viciously in the neck and begin sawing. I wake up and am at first appalled with myself. Throughout my life I have held myself responsible for what I dream myself doing, as if these actions were signs of things I could also do elsewhere. I feel as if I've murdered. I desperately try to remember and reexamine tliis dream. Everyone in it except myself and the assailant are dead—Mr. Barrett in the 19 6os, my dad from prostate cancer in 1985, his brother from emphysema and heart failure in 1996. There are no women in the dream, although my parents' bedroom, their marriage space, is at the heart of the battle. My mother in real life is still alive and has never had a serious illness. In astrology Cancer is a crab, with hooked claws like the hook at the end of the assailant's leg. I don't understand why in the dream I see only the men as having to battle this intruder, this monster, this cancer, but I evidently do. Otherwise my dream reduces to pretty clear symbols—the house is not just literally my parents' home but also the existential home, the marriage place, or—in Freud's terms—the woman. A difficult-to-kill monster has invaded mine. The pattern of my stabbing resembles the pattern of Linda's radiation treatments. I'm an adult in the dream, not a child, although the house and knife connect me with that past. The dead cannot, did not, win this fight. I remember that when my dad died I instantly felt that he was no longer between me and death, that I was on the front lines now, that my generation was now the vulnerable one. If this intruder is death, it will never die, at least not in this world. But we can slow it down. November i, 1999 Got up in the middle of the night and then forgot to close my bedroom door when I returned to bed. Was woken a few minutes later by police 116

sirens and screaming tires—Linda's TV on high volume because of her hearing loss. Took me twenty minutes to figure out what was wrong and why the sound was so loud. It was still loud after I closed my door. Last night Linda cooked a prime rib roast and Yorkshire pudding, and I brought up a prize bottle of 1986 Chateau Musar from Lebanon. Everything was delicious, but Linda ate only one slice of rare beef, previously one of her favorite foods. She says it no longer tastes good, although she still can enjoy roast lamb and chicken. Not sure whether this change is an effect of the tumor or of the chemotherapy, which we were warned could make some foods change in taste. But of course she's between chemotherapy sessions at the moment. She also has trouble with roast pork and pork chops. We used to joke that we were carnivores, God's counterbalance to superstitious vegetarians. The meat selection has always been the center of our meals, with salads and vegetables and wine selected as complements to it. Tonight Linda is cooking rack of lamb, glazed with Dijon mustard, garlic, and parsley, with her own scalloped potatoes made with year-old cheddar, green peas, and a 1994 Chateau Prieure-Lichine. The Prieure-Lichine will be lighter than the Musar, but tasty. November 4,1999 I still can't get used to the blank moments in Linda. She used to be one of the few people who could understand and appreciate my literary jokes and allusions. She used to say that we could never separate because no one else would understand our humor. Now if I make a pun or quip about someone's name she just looks at me in puzzlement. Today she began listing for me the three things we were going to have for supper—steak, fries, and salad—and got stalled after saying "steak." She then started asking a question she had asked me some moments before about what time I wanted to eat. I could see her stop and ask herself why she was asking this question when it wasn't what she wanted to be saying. "Fries?" I asked, knowing what she usually served with steak. "Yes, fries and salad," she said. "Will that be all right?" 117

November 6,1999 Linda seems to be sleeping more once again. She got: up this morning around eight, went to the Vintages wine release with Sara, and then went back to bed around eleven. It's now ten to five, and she's still sleeping. She's also become less tolerant of and welcoming to the dogs. Both rushed up to her while she was reading the paper and having coffee this morning and, tails wagging furiously, shoved their heads under her left armpit and down into her lap. Usually she is delighted with this vigorous show of affection, but today she groaned disgustedly on both occasions, and I could see that it was only out of sense of duty that she pulled herself together, petted them, and said "Nice doggie." I think she has trouble getting her mind to shift from one focus to another. Mike remembers something he'd seen on Linda's last MRI scan—that the mutated tumors are very different from the original, large, low-grade, self-contained tumor. The new tumor cells are infiltrative. Instead of composing a discrete, homogenous tumor body, they are constructing themselves in threads or filaments of cells and weaving their way in and around living brain tissue. They're fanning out from the bottom rear of the tumor, into the thalamus and hypothalamus, forming a spray of filaments, like a flower, that thrust away from the apparently dormant original tumor and appear to become finer until they disappear into the lower parts of her brain. Mike says he had trouble absorbing and understanding all this— that while her doctors had hours to analyze it he had only a few minutes, and he was also distracted momentarily by noticing her name, "LINDA DAVEY," written neatly on the MRI images. He says being forced to read his mother's name printed on the MRI of a brain tumor was surreal and . . . he doesn't finish. I loved Mike intensely at that moment. He's having a very difficult time these days. His girlfriend, Shelley, was operated on, unsuccessfully, for skin cancer about the same time that Linda was having her biopsy. Her second operation has been delayed until her white blood cell count rises high enough. In the meantime she's discovered a lump low in her breast, which a mammogram shows may be cancerous 118

and related to other lumps in her armpit. Her doctor dismissed the lump a month ago as insignificant, and she obtained a mammogram only by being persistent. George has written with the news that he has been in Toronto, where he picked up a "virulent flu." Mike and I are paranoid about getting sick ourselves, and thus endangering Linda, with her medication-damaged immune system. We both have gotten flu shots, and we pop vitamin C and E pills every morning. George is probably run down just from the exhaustion of caring for Angela and seeing her die. He's been in bed for a week, he says, with every symptom available. "Just enough energy to tell you I'm (sorta) alive." November 10,1999 I've been watching Linda closely, and she hasn't seemed to be sleeping more than one would expect over the past few days. At least not more than half the day. But I also think she may have overheard Mike and me worrying about her sleeping, and she may be working at staying awake. I notice that she hasn't watched much television in the last two or three days during the daytime. Instead she's been playing computer games for hours at a time, an activity during which it's less easy to fall asleep—-she only watches television while lying in bed. It's now 8:30, and she's already asleep, and she'll probably sleep until 8 A.M. Mike's news from Shelley isn't good. Her doctors haven't told her anything about her mammogram but have requisitioned tests of her liver and kidney functions. Talked with Kelly Tait, Seizer's breeder, last night. She and her husband live in Manitoba. She wants us to take Seizer to the U.S. national specialty show in Kansas City next fall. I told her it was a long way for us. Tried to hint that Linda hasn't been feeling well, but she thought I was talking about her arthritis and laughingly suggested some natural remedies. It's clear that no rumors about Linda's health have reached her, although she had heard that Scott and others have been taking the current competition 119

between Honey and Seizer "quite bitterly." I haven't let her know how bitterly Linda and I have been taking it. She also said a friend of Scott's in another province had phoned her a couple of months ago, asking her to try to persuade us to stop showing Seizer. The person had claimed that Seizer wasn't looking good and that continuing to show him might damage his reputation. Kelly had thought it an odd and possibly duplicitous suggestion. She's quite aware that Seizer is hampering Scott's attempts to have Honey overtake her own Dane, Jagger, for number one Dane of 1999. November 13,1999 Linda tells me again that her hands feel better and stronger but that her memory isn't good. She's apparently forgotten that she told me this a couple of days ago, but I don't remind her. I tell her it's a lot better than it was last spring. She's not sure. She says last spring she had language problems as well, which made her memory seem worse, but now she can more easily find words. Her memory is currently so bad that if she turns off her TV in the middle of a program she's not able to remember in a few minutes' time what it was she was watching. I ask if she has to restart the program from the beginning. "No," she says. "Once I turn it back on I remember what it's about and what I've seen." "So your memory could be worse," I say, and we both laugh. November 14,1999 George says he still has the flu but is able to get out of bed for part of the day. He asks, of course, about Linda. He says, "The way I felt: I'm supposed to protect her, my wife, that's the old-fashioned sense, and then I just can't. All I can do is do for her." It's been years since Linda has allowed me to fantasize that I could protect her. She's never liked me even to try to touch her elbow when we've been walking on rough pavement. Which is why I was so baffled when she had me help her so much for the North Carolina trip.

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November 20,1999 I'm in Ottawa for three days for the annual general meeting of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation—my last days on the board of directors. Today's also our wedding anniversary, our thirtieth. Over the years Linda's never made much of our anniversary, often pretending to forget it—or perhaps actually forgetting. Part of the feminist downgrading of marriage among women's accomplishments, I've sometimes thought. Some years she's even hinted that my remembering expressed my unconscious male desire to control her. Sometimes more than hinted. On the phone today, though, she's disturbed that I've been away for our anniversary. John and Shirley have been to visit, and Linda says they were "shocked" that I was away. November 22, 1999 Up early this morning to take Linda to the Cancer Clinic for a blood test at 8:15 and an appointment with her oncologist, Dr. Macdonald, at nine. Today her second round of chemotherapy is scheduled to begin, provided her white blood cell count is good. Dr. Macdonald's nurse greets us promptly at nine and takes us to an examining room. She is surprised by how cheerful, animated, and verbal Linda is. Linda tells her she feels much better, that her right-side weakness is less, that the numbness in her hands has subsided, and that she is walking better. The nurse takes notes and tells us that Dr. Macdonald will be in shortly—that Linda's his first patient. As usual, however, he is slow to arrive, and Linda becomes impatient. After half an hour she leaves the room to seek a washroom. I suspect she partly wants to draw attention to the fact that she is still waiting. When she comes back I engage her in a conversation about the medical fixtures in the room and about the color coding of the electrical outlets. She tells me that the red outlets are the ones that have generator backup in case of a power failure, that she's learned this on ER. Linda's not only impatient for herself but also worried about how I will get to the university on time to teach my n A.M. class. 121

Dr. Macdonald is also impressed by Linda's condition. He says he has a bad cold—I notice his nostrils are inflamed—and that he will have to sit at some distance from us. Linda asks about her blood test, and he tells her that it was very good and that he can proceed with her chemotherapy. He has run out of prescription forms. He goes to get some and is away for about fifteen minutes. Again Linda gets impatient. She goes out and slowly paces the hallway. The nurse comes with a calendar for the new chemotherapy before the doctor returns with a renewal of Linda's decadron prescription. From here I take Linda to the chemotherapy station for her vincristine injection. It's only a few steps away, but she has forgotten its location. Again I'm struck by the abrupt contrasts between what Linda can now do well—like talk intelligently with the doctor about her condition—and what she still can't do at all—like control her impatience or remember the fairly simple layout of this floor of the Cancer Center. We report to the desk and are told to take a seat and await a nurse's call. I've arranged with Mike to bring our Honda, with the university parking pass, to the main entrance at 10:30 so I can drive to my class and he can stay with Linda and drive her home in our van. It's a little after ten. I can't use a cell phone inside the center—there are warning signs at all the entrances that cell phones interfere with medical equipment—so I go outside and phone Mike to confirm that I need him. I also phone the English department secretary and ask her to put a sign on my office door canceling my 10-11 A.M. office hour. I go back to check on Linda, and she seems a little disoriented, surprised to see me, and she tells me I should be on my way to my class. She knows Mike is coming to look after her, but she seems to have been unable to comprehend the details of the arrangements. I go back outside and sit on a bench in the sunshine. It's an amazingly warm day for November, over sixty degrees. I watch cancer patients being brought in and out of the building by friends or relatives. On our various visits here I've noticed that there are particular attitudes and personas that the patients seem to adopt. The young men, including the ones in wheel122

chairs, often affect hard-baked cynical stares and wear macho, body-builder clothing. The elderly women often seem to have become quite fastidious and genteel in their attire, wearing tasteful dresses, nylons, low heels, dressy gloves, much as if they were going to church. Many of the middleaged men, however, dress sloppily in worn athletic clothes, as if they were athletes who had gone to seed and were diffident about both their appearance and their health. Elderly men often seem to accentuate their fragility, walking with an exaggerated shuffle. Maybe they're not exaggerating. Mike arrives promptly, interrupting my reverie. I get to my class on time. I'm teaching three poems by Earle Birney and find myself more emotional than I expected to be about his "Vancouver Lights" and his observations about the likelihood that humanity will some day extinguish itself. At one point I have to struggle to keep my voice from breaking. When I get home Linda is sleeping, and Mike tells me that she caused a small scene in the chemotherapy waiting area when more than an hour went by before she was called for her injection. She had become increasingly restless and tense about the delay and had begun threatening to leave—in a progressively louder voice. Like I had on other days, Mike had thwarted her by ignoring her. Sadly, he knew that she was both powerless to carry out her threats and desperate to be treated. Finally she had stood up and shouted to no one in particular that she would rather die than spend her days waiting like this in a chemotherapy ward. There were a dozen or more other patients, each with one or more family members, also waiting. Some seemed very disturbed by her outburst, especially by the mention of death. Mike managed to distract her, and fortunately she was called shortly afterward. Although the chemotherapy station has about eight beds for the administering of injections, only two were in use because of staff shortages. The shortages are a consequence both of the low pay this province gives doctors and nurses and of provincial cutbacks in health funding. On days like this I find myself wishing serious cancers on all members of the Conservative 123

government. Linda's fortunate to have to wait only an hour for treatment, rather than the weeks that Mike's girlfriend has been wailing for treatment of her breast cancer. I wonder if it will become necessary to sedate Linda before these waiting-area episodes. November 23,1999 Linda's been tired all day today, sleeping off and on. As well as the vincristine injection, she had her large dose of lomustine, last night at dinner. She's still cheery and articulate when awake, however, and amazingly aware of her medication schedule, requesting pills before we have to remind her of them. She also managed to roast a chicken for dinner, although she didn't eat much of it. With the chemotherapy she's back on dietary restrictions, which forbid wine and the Boveril meat extracts with which she likes to flavor her gravy. She ate three french fries, a slice of chicken, and three green beans, and she drank a small glass of water. November 24, 1999 On Monday one of the young women in my fourth-year seminar on contemporary Canadian fiction presented a paper on dance images in Daphne Marlatt's novel Ana Historic. One of the passages she focused on is the one in which the adolescent Annie is taken by her parents in the mid-1950s to a performance of Gisele by Margot Fonteyn, although in recalling it Annie appears to confuse Gisele with Swan Lake and Les Sylphides. I remembered Linda once mentioning that she had met Fonteyn when her father had done the lighting for the Royal Ballet at Vancouver's Orpheum Theater, where she had watched performances from the lighting booth. So last night I asked her about her meeting with Fonteyn, what year it was, and what ballets she had danced. I was astonished at how much she recalled. She said she was about eleven at the time, so it must have been 1954 or 1955. The company's two principal dancers were Violet Elvin and Fonteyn, and one of them was sent each night to the lighting booth to tell Linda's father where and when dancers would make their 124

entrances and exits—to guide him through the performance. The ballets she saw were Gisele and Swan Lake. Elvin must have been with them for Gisele, and Fonteyn must have danced it, she recalled, because she can remember Elvin telling her the story of Gisele during the performance. Today I relayed Linda's recollections to that class, linking it to the interesting factual and historic grounds on which Daphne's novel rests and on which its appeal for the reader's trust is built. As I spoke I suddenly found myself feeling emotionally tender and having to work at concealing this from the class—as I'd had to when teaching Birney's "Vancouver Lights." I wonder if I'm cracking up, or if there's some reason for how I feel at these times. I think the cause has something to do with hope. What got to me in Birney's poem was his enormous hopefulness about human creativity—"the fathomless heat of our dwarfdom . . ." What moved me today when I began recounting Linda's anecdote was the hopefulness of an eleven-year-old girl meeting an extraordinary, culturally rich, and distant world and being helped, given new words and understandings, by a woman who could have easily not spoken with her. It is so dangerous to risk hoping now. At the Cancer Clinic on Monday, when it was so clear that the chemotherapy had dramatically improved Linda's abilities, I wondered just for a second whether perhaps she might eventually be cured. If the first course of chemotherapy has been so successful, mightn't the other six eradicate the tumor altogether? It's such a tempting thought. Then I remembered how rare such an eradication is, how the treatments Linda is receiving are regarded by medical researchers as stopgaps, delaying tactics, something to forestall death while the search continues for "real" cures. And so I said nothing. November 25, 1999 Got up at 6:15 this morning, unable to sleep longer. At 8:30, when I was ready to go out, Linda still hadn't come down for coffee—unusual for her. For the past week or so she's had difficulty sleeping past seven. I went up to look in on her, and she sleepily asked if it was 7:30 yet. Just before 125

waking I'd had an odd dream. I was with Linda in a marshy, wooded area beside a stream that was running almost parallel to the: shore of a small lake. It was sunny and temperate. We were enjoying the sun and the scent of evergreens and the sounds of birds and running water. One patch of vegetation beside the stream puzzled us. It had gone dry and gray, despite the sun and the abundant moisture. There were only tufts of long, dry grass where there should have been abundant grass. A small, bedraggled pine tree hung its cones over the water. I looked downstream from this patch and noticed that some of the tufts had come loose and were drifting away in a rapid current. I wondered if the tufts weren't part of some process of regeneration, and I reached down and plucked several and tossed them into the stream. Sure enough, they were caught up in the current and went dancing away into the distance. I thought about plucking and tossing one of the pinecones but decided not to since pine seeds need soil rather than just water. Then I turned back to Linda. Through the trees we could see the dim outline of a small boat-—it looked like a Haida canoe—near the shore of the lake. While I was driving today I thought again about the dream and wondered if it had something to do with the hopefulness I wrote of yesterday. Just now I realized that the surprisingly dry and tufted grass resembles Linda's hair, which has been thinning and falling out since the second week of her radiation treatment, and that the pine tree could be me. Plus a funereal boat? The Lady of the Lake's barge, which Linda, who has often read both Mallory and Tennyson, knows so well? Dreams aren't predictions, however. November 29,1999 I was away late yesterday. Linda waited up for me. She'd cooked coq au vin earlier that day and had it reheated for me when I arrived. With the competence that's been returned to her by the chemotherapy, she seems to be eager to do things while she still can. Before her illness she probably wouldn't have waited up, and she would have left it to me to 126

reheat the coq au vin. She's also been busy sewing. With Michael's help, she tells me, she's sewn two new dog beds—covers for two-foot-by-fourfoot slabs of foam rubber—to replace the ones Stevie has chewed and Seizer has scratched bare. Today she's asked me to bring down my king-size duvet cover for her to repair—the top seam and the stitching along the side that opens have both worn through, causing the cloth to rip. When she begins looking at it closely, however, she quickly becomes perplexed, and she wonders if it needs to have its entire back panel professionally replaced. I show her how the rips are only on two edges of the panel and point out that she can fix the opening edge by cutting out and replacing a six-inch strip along the entire side; she can fix the end by opening the seam and resewing it an inch further in, making the cover approximately one inch shorter. I go out to teach my class, and by the time I come back, she has the side mostly repaired—a six-by-eight-inch panel of new sheeting neatly sewn in to replace the ripped area. But she's very tired. Her hands are starting to shake. I gently suggest she have a rest and finish the cover tomorrow. November 30,1999 I was passing Alison Conway's office today, feeling guilty again for having virtually avoided her since Linda fell ill in March. Alison was an MA student in one of my graduate classes at York, in the middle 19805, and now she teaches full time here at Western. Linda and I helped her and her husband, Bryce, get settled in London, and we have exchanged dinners with them several times a year since. Until this year. On an impulse I stop at Alison's open door and apologize for having been so invisible. I explain that Linda became seriously ill in March, and that it's only been recently that she's shown any signs of recovery. Alison, of course, wants to know what was wrong, but I say that Linda's very embarrassed to be ill and doesn't want me talking about it. Alison's a direct, straight-ahead person, and that's fine with her. But she wonders if Linda would come to dinner. I say I wonder that too. She presses me 127

to try for next Wednesday, joking that they don't have their Christmas decorations up yet. She remembers how vehemently Linda dislikes Christmas. I go home and find Linda working again on the duvet cover, putting together the last seam. To my amazement, she's eager to go out to dinner. December 3,1999 ••$•• Matt Cohen died yesterday, of lung cancer. There was a time in the early 19705, when Linda and I lived on Elm Road just south of the Avenue Road-Highway 401 junction, that Matt would drop by two or three times a week. He was living mostly in Toronto but spending weekends at a farm near Kingston where his wife, Susan, lived. He would drop by on his way out to Kingston and then again on his way back. He usually didn't say much. He wasn't getting along with Susan, although if we asked about her he would always smile shyly and say she was a nice person. We would make a pot of tea and go about whatever we were doing. Our children were between one and five years of age in these years. Sometime later Matt told Linda that his visits with us had saved his life. That we hadn't wanted anything from him, had let him sit quietly between the conflicting stresses of his city and country situations. In 1973 he left a draft of The Disinherited with us to read, and I remember us talking with him about how he could better link the rural and city parts of its action. In 1975 Matt was one of the eight writers Linda brought together for a reading tour of towns in the Canadian Arctic. He once told us that he knew he wasn't good with close relationships, that he didn't feel comfortable in them, and that he valued the way we did not press him. Later that year, with Linda and me, he was part of the editorial board that Stan Bevington assembled to replace Victor Coleman at Coach House Press. By 1978 we were living in a larger house, near Casa Loma, no longer on Matt's route in and out of Toronto, and so we tended to see him only once a month, at Coach House Press meetings. That diffident pragmatism about people was very much Matt. I think we last saw him in France, maybe at Strasbourg, maybe at Dijon in 1989. He was writing The Spanish Doctor. 128

We had recently been in Toledo, and we told him about the faithfully restored and empty medieval synagogue there. Almost all of its members had been killed in Queen Isabella's pogroms of 1492. The others were expelled to the Balkans or the Caucasus. Linda was broodingly upset about Matt's death last night and this morning, but I think she may have already forgotten about it now. But she hasn't forgotten about going out to dinner. This afternoon she got Mike to take her shopping for a new wig and two new designer blouses—one for next Wednesday and another for the Clements' New Year's party. The wig is extremely good—matches her own hair almost perfectly. She used to buy a lot of expensive clothes, but she'd get them cheaply at Toronto's Ex-Toggery stores. Her tastes have run to silk blouses and suits, designer labels, fine wool skirts, Italian shoes. Another part of her patrician desire for only the best. Although, just as she's liked film noir and horror movies, she has also enjoyed kitchy sweatshirts and jeans. Pretty much all she wears now. December 6, 1999 <* Linda's just got news that her mother has had a heart attack. She's now in the cardiac care unit of the Vancouver General Hospital. Linda's sister, Susie, who currently lives in Medicine Hat, called with the news. Linda offered her Aeroplan points to Susie so she can fly to Vancouver. She says she told Susie that it is difficult for her to fly right now. Linda seems stoic about her mother and not particularly bothered about not being able to travel to her. I wonder what will happen if her mother's condition worsens, or if she dies. How will she explain to Susie and to her half-brother, Av, why she is not coming to the funeral? But Linda doesn't seem concerned about such problems, which is perhaps a good thing. Today we haven't mentioned her mother. Linda has resolved to make high-calorie "satin balls" for Seizer to try to help him put on weight, and she's gone out with Mike to buy the ingredients—molasses, oatmeal, hamburger, eggs. 129

George writes that he's been having long, complex dreams every night, many about Angela. He titled his message "Hate December." December 7,1999 •^ Linda has phoned her mother at the hospital. I didn't hear the conversation. Linda tells me after that her mother was narcissistically melodramatic, as usual, and repeated several times that she'd had a "massive" heart attack. Linda makes a face, implying that her mother was full of self-pity and was trying to force others to feel sorry for her. For Linda, the phone call has brought back all those moments in her childhood when her mother was unable to cope with poverty, stopped shopping and cooking, and tried to manipulate her daughters into looking after her. I don't say anything about this, or about my thought that someone who's had any sort of heart attack can be forgiven self-pity. On the other hand, Linda is physically just as badly off as her mother and will probably be outlived by her. December 8,1999 <* Susie is flying to Vancouver today. Apparently Jackie had another "bad spell" yesterday—a fluid buildup around the heart that had to be drained. I think of poor Siggie and Soren. Linda phones her again. She's depressed and somewhat drugged, understandably. The doctors have decided to do an angioplasty. I try to tell Linda that this is a minimally invasive cardiac procedure, but she's sure it's dangerous major surgery and that her mother will be in hospital for "three months" afterward. I wonder why she wants to believe this. I remember that Linda desperately, for various reasons, wants to outlive her mother. December 9,1999 (noon) •«$•• Last night was our dinner with Alison and Bryce. The glass of white wine that they gave Linda as we snacked on a predinner shrimp ring was the first Linda'd had since the start of her second round of chemotherapy, which ended two days ago. Linda was relatively animated and conversational. Alison and Bryce spent a lot of time talking about their baby boy, 130

Matthew, who's now almost two, about Alison's difficult pregnancy with him, about his inconsolability as an infant. Don't know whether they really were relieved to have someone to talk to about Matthew or were talking about him to take pressure off Linda. I suspect partly the latter and that this motive may have unconsciously given them permission to indulge the former. Just as Bryce is putting food on our plates, Linda decides to go upstairs to the washroom. The children's rooms are also there. There's a loud crash shortly after she goes. Alison thinks Matthew has fallen out of bed. I say no, it's more likely Linda, and rush up to find her lying flat on her back on the bathroom floor. I talk to her, and she mumbles that she's okay, she didn't slip, just felt dizzy. I sit with her a couple of minutes and then begin trying to persuade her to get to her feet. It looks to me like the halfglass of wine has hit her with a wallop, probably a residual effect of the chemotherapy. She's acting as if she's drunk—says she likes being on the floor. I remind her that she wanted to pee and slowly help her up. Then she wants me to leave and shut the door. I do, reluctantly, and I go down and tell Alison and Bryce that it was Linda we heard, that she's still weak and has slipped, and that it will be another couple of minutes before she returns. They've taken the loaded plates from the table and put them into the oven. They are sitting quietly, as if all this is routine. I go back and sit on the floor outside the bathroom door, and I keep checking with her. Finally I hear the toilet flush and water run, and she comes slowly out, looking tired. She's unsteady on the stairs and asks for my arm. Back at the table she doesn't touch her food, which is delicious. Pork roast, baby beets in a pureed beet sauce, candied carrots and shallots. She apologizes to Bryce, who has done the cooking. Alison does most of the talking, about her problems getting her book published. It seems that most U.S. university presses are cutting back on their literary publishing. Linda speaks only occasionally—but at some length and with some energy when she does. When we leave I don't know whether the evening was a "success" for her or not. Today she's said nothing at all about it. 131

There's been no word yet of Linda's mom. I begin marking a set of sophomore essays. One of the topics is the theme of solitude in early Canadian poetry. I find myself thinking of Linda's mother in the hospital alone, and of my own prospects of spending most of the rest of my life alone. Hadn't planned on this. When Linda and I quarreled bitterly in the mid 19705, one of the things that kept us together was that we knew we would be good intellectual companions later. Not that I'm. still not attracted to other women. But I try not to think about that. December 9,1999 (evening) <* Lying in bed in her pyjamas, as usual, Linda phoned her mother's hospital room late this afternoon. She reached Susie. The doctors have done an angioplasty, and it's been unsuccessful. The arteries are too badly clogged. Jackie's now heavily sedated while recovering from the procedure. Susie urges Linda to fly out and see her while she can. Linda mutters to me afterward that she's probably going to have to go. It seems madness to me for her to even consider going. She finds every task she attempts stressful and difficult, and she tires extremely quickly. Almost every time she cooks she forgets ingredients. Afterward she's too tired to eat, and if she does eat she goes immediately back to bed. For the past few weeks she has spent most of her days in bed, often never getting out of her pyjamas. I worry that she'll collapse in the airport departure lounge, or in the aisle or washroom of the plane, like she collapsed at Alison and Bryce's. Or that she'll get confused and lost trying to change planes hi Toronto and either collapse or explode in fury and exasperation—she'll insult the first clerk she sees and blame that person for her confusion. Someone will have to go with her. I point out that Susie and other family members in Vancouver are bound to notice how weak and sick she is. She agrees thai: this worries her. I tell her that she may have to level with Susie soon about her tumor— either explain her appearance if she flies out, or explain why she's not flying out. She worries about what this could do to Susie;, who in the past 132

has suffered from Crohn's disease and has often had too much stress in her life. Now she'd be trying to cope with the possible death of her mother and find out that her only sister is terminally ill as well. Later I phone Sara and explain the rapidly changing situation to her. She volunteers at once to take a week off work and accompany Linda to Vancouver, if she decides to go. I point out that her mom has characteristically been impetuous and stubborn, even before the illness, and she might want to stay in Vancouver until something decisive happens to her mother. When she went out to visit her father during his last illness in 1975,1 tell Sara, she stayed for six weeks, at first on the pretext of taking charge of his treatment—she claimed Susie and her mother were weak in dealing with the hospital and the doctors. When his condition continued to decline she decided to stay on until he died. Then she stayed on to arrange his funeral. She stayed another week to recover from the stress of it all. I suggest to Sara that she would have to arrange with Linda before they left that this was explicitly not an open-ended trip—that they would come back together on a specified date, regardless of Jackie's condition. Linda has blood tests and an MRI scheduled for the next few weeks at the Cancer Center, and she's supposed to begin her third round of chemotherapy on January 2. A few minutes ago I talked to Mike about the problems as we watched the evening news. It's interesting that he didn't offer to accompany Linda to Vancouver, although he agreed that it would be virtually impossible for her to travel alone and unfair to the airline for us to allow her to try. She'd most likely come off the flight in a wheelchair or on a stretcher. One of the big problems, he suggested, is that his mom's mental capabilities are being swamped by all the complications and contingencies created by her situation and her own mother's illness. She can't keep all the factors in mind at once and analyze them clearly. December 10,1999 «£* Susie called Linda twice this afternoon. The first time to say that in her view their mother is slowly deteriorating. Fluid is building up in her 133

chest cavity. She's been on a ventilator for the past few hours. Susie's sure she's dying but she's going to be able to ask the doctor for his prognosis in a few minutes. When she calls back her news is more ambiguous. The doctor said that he'd seen some patients "come back" for a while after such setbacks and live for another year, but on the other hand she might continue to decline and die within a week. Susie now very much wants Linda to fly out. I can understand. Susie's spent her whole life relying on her better-educated, brighter, more worldly wise older sister to look after things for her and is probably extremely puzzled by Linda's reluctance so far to step forward and take charge. Not that Susie isn't herself bright and capable—it's just that, since grade school she's been known, or imagined, to be "not as bright" as her shining sister. It was astonishing today to listen to Linda, amid her illness, still take advantage of that fabled superiority on the phone—summon up her motherly, reassuring, partly condescending voice and tell Susie that it would be "very bad" for their mother if she were to fly out. "She'd be sure she was going to die," Linda told her. "She'd be sure I would only come out if we knew she was dying." I wonder if Susie was persuaded. Linda seemed to think so, but maybe Susie was merely intimidated by her big sister one more time. Overall, I'm reassured. Linda clearly doesn't want to go. What's caused her to make this decision, I don't know. But I'm not going to press my luck by asking. Sara phones about a new laptop computer that she's buying on my behalf and that I'm planning to pick up from her in Toronto on Sunday. I tell her of the latest phone call. She's not convinced that her mom won't change her mind and try to go. She's concerned that flying could be dangerous for someone with her type of tumor. I agree to phone the Cancer Center and inquire. She would like me to call this weekend, but it's already Friday evening, and I am reluctant to call and risk having Dr. Fisher or Dr. Macdonald disturbed at home.

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December n, 1999 <* Today when Susie calls Jackie is a little better. Linda talks to Jackie briefly, then again to Susie. The doctors have been talking to both Jackie and Susie about resuscitation. Both Susie and the doctors are reluctant to use extreme methods to revive her should she have a serious setback, but Jackie is adamant that she wants to be revived no matter what. Linda groans, and she tells Susie that things would be better if Jackie had more guts, that at this rate she'll probably end up brain-damaged and on life support for another ten years. I think this is unlikely—even life support can't keep patients alive if their hearts collapse. I don't say anything until Mike and Linda and I are together at dinner, and then I ask Linda how her mother is. She says she's better and then mentions the resuscitation discussions. "She's a selfish old bitch," she suddenly explodes, repeating the phrase several times. "Wants to stay alive no matter how much it screws up the rest of us." Mike and I know well the rancor Linda has harbored towards her mother, but we're still shocked. December 13,1999 •<& Last night John and Shirley came over with two of their daughters— Jenny, who performs in Las Vegas with Cirque du Soleil; and Katy, who's just about to enter college. As we were opening a bottle of wine, John asked Linda about her mom. Linda quickly mentioned, with some scorn, the resuscitation discussion. On an impulse I quipped that Linda just wants her mom to die, and John and Shirley both looked at me in alarm, obviously worried that Linda was going to be insulted. Instead, Linda exclaimed, with a self-amused smile, "You bet I do, the selfish old bitch. Do I ever hate her!" And began a long, partly bitter, partly humorous expostulation. I think now I took a big chance with my quip. It's one thing for Linda to tell her own family how much she hates her mother but quite another for her to go semipublic. But at least I feel more sure that she's not going to want to fly to her mother's bedside. 135

Nevertheless, today I called the Cancer Center and left an inquiry for her doctors about the advisability of her making a long flight. December 14,1999 • On the phone today Linda's mother tells her weepily that she's happy that she'll be dying before her children. Linda doesn't respond. When she hangs up she repeats the remark to me and mutters savagely, "She'd better hurry up and do it then!" Her mother seems better again today, she says. I don't know whether to say "good," or what. December 16,1999 Linda gets Mike to drive her to A&P this afternoon to buy fresh lobsters for dinner. Last night she cooked carbonade a la Flamande—a complex beef dish in which the meat is cut into small pieces, interlayered with six cups of sliced onions, and simmered in beer, brown sugar, and spices. The night before she cooked a rump roast with Yorkshire pudding. She's evidently trying to make the most of this period between chemotherapies and their dietary restrictions. For each meal she has me bring up a decent wine—a Pauillac for the roast beef, a Chateauneuf du Pape for the carbonade, an Alsace Tokay-Pinot Gris for tonight's lobster. Seizer and Stevie hover around the table trying to figure out what the bright-orange critters on our plates are. They were slow to eat their breakfasts, so I've delayed feeding them. Afterward I lace their kibble with a couple of tablespoons of the melted butter Linda prepared for our lobster, and they empty their bowls. December 17,1999 Linda's mother is being released from hospital. We've bought Susie a Vancouver-Calgary ticket on Westjet so she can fly back to Medicine Hat for Christmas on Tuesday. Linda insisted on phoning our travel agent and making the arrangements. I'm amazed they're okay.

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December 18,1999 Sara came in by bus yesterday for the weekend. She's all excited about her small, "start-up" software company having been taken over by a very large U.S. one, Parametric. Her stock options in her old company—it was started only seven months ago—will vest immediately, and she's getting a four-thousand-dollar raise. She's also arranged for me to buy one of the old company's fancy laptop computers at twenty-five percent of cost. Linda cooked a leg of lamb for dinner and had me bring up an expensive Margaux and a Brunello. She ate almost nothing, drank more than her share, and then threw up all over her clothes and the tablecloth. Sara and I cleaned her up, and she went up to bed. Sara brought her clothes back down and I put them into the washer. About an hour later Linda's phone began to ring. After the fifth ring I picked it up. It was Susie, calling to tell Linda that she had their mom back in her house. "I didn't think you would answer," she began. "I didn't think you'd dare"—referring to Linda's legendary sense of proprietorship over her own phone. I laughed the remark off, thinking, however that Susie clearly had little sense of how things are with Linda these days. When Linda eventually woke up, around midnight, she had no recollection that her phone had rung and shrugged when I told her I had answered it. I questioned Susie somewhat about Jackie's situation. Susie admitted that she's not good—in worse shape than before the attack. Her medication—digoxin, lasix, fortecor—is now the maximum possible dosage, much like poor Siggie's dosage, I think, in the weeks before he died. Her heart muscles were damaged significantly by the attack. She doesn't want to go into a nursing home. The province can only provide token home care. "What can you do!" says Susie rhetorically. She and Linda have rented Jackie an emergency call device to wear at all times. Other family members and neighbors will phone her regularly or look in on her. December 20,1999 I took Linda to Loblaws this morning to buy ingredients for the dogs' "satin ball" treats. She shuffled around the store, sometimes standing in 137

one place in the middle of an aisle for minutes at a time, trying to get herself oriented or to recall what she'd been looking for. Is she confused at times like this, or is she merely focusing intently on a task to the exclusion of other matters, like whether or not she is blocking an aisle? I suspect the latter. The look on her face is one of extreme concentration. With her shuffle, her intense, one-dimensional field of attention, and her closefitting little hat hiding her baldness, she reminds me again of my mother, who still wears little 19505 hats. She's had some strange ideas of late. Last Monday several paintings were put up for auction by the city police commission—local paintings that they had bought with the help of provincial grants in the 19705. Linda thought we should bid on the most spectacular of these, a four-foot-bythree-foot Bernice Vincent acrylic that juxtaposes colorful closeups of apples with a suburban street scene. It is an extraordinary painting. I calculated that the reserve price was probably $2,100. Linda suggested I phone my mother and borrow the money to buy it. But we are already over $200,000 in debt from various other extravagant purchases over the last ten years. Last summer I got eight thousand dollars from my mother to pay our house taxes and insurance. Tonight she's decided we should buy a new car to replace her 1988 Honda. "But you don't drive," I tell her. No, but she thinks we need a reliable car for Mike to drive. She says my mother has the money and I should phone and get some from her. I firmly tell her no, and she seems to forget about the idea. I think Mike's lucky to have any kind of car at his disposal. The only reason to have two cars right now is to enable him to drive Linda to the store or to medical appointments when I am out of town. In an ideal world, if he wanted a car for himself he'd have to go to work and buy one. If the Honda does become unusable, it would make more sense for Mike and Linda to use taxis when I am away with the van. But I don't say such things to Linda, who will never accept that we may have been hurting Mike by making his long-term unemployment so comfortable. Maybe she knows I wouldn't buy Mike another car if she were dead and wants to get one now. 138

There's a paradox about Mike's unemployment. It makes him dependent on us, but I suspect it's also linked to Linda's own stubborn independence, which has led her to refuse employment with corporations or law firms and to want her own practice. He grew up amid our repeatedly expressed skepticism about the ethics of big business, our socialist anger at its labor practices, its deliberate fouling of our environment, its greed for natural resources. Maybe we did too good a job of educating him. Now he's more angry than us when businesses move to Mexico in order to avoid Canadian labor laws, or when old trees are cut down at Clayoquot Sound, or when Ontario Hydro builds heavily polluting coal-fired power plants simply because there are no regulations forbidding them. He watches the CBC National News with me and broods and grumbles at each new case of corporate callousness. Why won't Irving take financial responsibility for its sunken oil barge? Why are poorly maintained trucks losing their brakes or wheels on our highways? There may not be a potential employer that Mike would feel guiltless working for—one he didn't believe was motivated by greed. He grumbles repeatedly that because the world's natural resources are finite, neverending economic expansion—the underlying principle of the capitalist economy—is not only unethical but also impossible. He complains that my generation is not only leaving his to pay our pensions but also to live with its global garbage. Maybe he's opting out of our entire economicexpansion culture. I wonder what he thinks of Linda's and my conspicuous consumption, our trips to Paris, our carpets woven by underpaid, uneducated children in Iran, our ninety-dollar bottles of wine, our sixtyfive-dollar Riedel wine glasses, our sixteen-room house that Ontario Hydro's polluting power plants cool in summer and heat in winter. I never ask. Maybe I'd tell him that as a socialist I don't believe in individual solutions to political problems, only in social and systemic ones. He'd probably tell me he has no faith that there could ever be an uncorrupted socialism. Maybe Linda senses Mike's struggle with such issues when she suggests we buy him a car. 139

December 21,1999 Dreamed last night that Linda and I have been traveling and are now back home and tidying up our house because visitors are coming. But the house is my childhood one in Abbotsford. In the dream Linda's been unsteady and has already slopped one mug of coffee. She's got herself a new mugful to drink while we work and is now perching it precariously on a soft-sided suitcase that we've left open on the end of the sofa by the front hall. I tell her not to leave it there, that it may tip over, but she angrily refuses my advice—"I'm not going to spill it," she shouts. I'm thinking that she's been making as much mess as she's been cleaning up. The mug, predictably, tips over. I yell at her, and she shrugs, so I angrily pick up my own full mug of coffee and hurl it into the suitcase where the other has spilled. Coffee pours out of the bottom of the suitcase and spreads over the sofa and rug. "Why did you do that?" she asks. "Because you didn't keep your word," I say. December 22, 1999 The repairman was supposed to come some time today to service our reverse-osmosis water system. I got up early, tidied the kitchen, and swept the mouse droppings from the cupboard under the sink where the waterpurifying machine is housed. The wall behind the cupboard backs onto the garage, and mice come in under the garage door and follow holes drilled for wiring through the wall and into both the basement and this cupboard. While feeding the dogs I noticed that the lumps on Seizer's body were worse once again this morning, so I made an appointment to take him to his vet at 10:30 and asked Mike to listen for the repairman. Taking Seizer to the vet is another task that Linda would normally have insisted on doing herself. On the vet's scale, Seizer weighs 159, up ten pounds since his last visit, three weeks ago. The satin balls seem to be working. Warren wants to do a biopsy on one of the lumps, but taking a sample will leave a scar, he warns. Do I want to go ahead and have him do one? This is a decision Linda would have made. I find an obscure spot 140

near his right elbow, on the nonshow side. Warren is an expert surgeon and can be trusted to sew the incision up neatly. When I get back home Linda is in the kitchen. The repairman has called and will be here in ten minutes. She's not concerned about Seizer but she is angry I wasn't there to answer the call from the repairman. She goes upstairs before the repairman arrives. It takes him almost an hour to drain the tank and install the new filters and membrane. He is packing his tools when Linda comes down and asks if I've told him the tap is "no good." The system has its own small faucet, which has been idiosyncratic since this repairman adjusted it five years ago. Instead of shutting off in its "off" position, it shuts off when the lever is two-thirds towards the "off" position and drips or runs steadily with the lever elsewhere. Both the repairman and I thought this arrangement was acceptable back then, but today Linda rants that the tap "has never been any good." I suspect that with her illness she's been less able to remember not to turn the lever fully "off." The repairman spends ten minutes in his truck looking for a replacement faucet, installs it, and then doesn't charge us for it—he'd already made up our bill! And he probably thinks our old faucet is perfectly good and can be given to another customer. Maybe because the kitchen is clean and tidy, Linda announces she's going to bake an angel food cake. I have to go out to the university and then buy dog food for over Christmas. When I come back, three hours later, there's a strong smell of fresh cake. After dinner Linda brings the cake to the table from the back kitchen. It's clearly overdone. She contemplates it, then she tells me she had set the timer on the stove and then gone upstairs where she couldn't hear the timer and forgotten about the cake. She thinks it was in the oven for an hour too long. She pokes at it dispiritedly and manages to pull some unburned white parts from its interior. She puts this into a mug and adds some ice cream. I use a knife to cut myself a small piece. Neither of us says much. She takes her mug upstairs to bed.

141

December 23,1999 Today is the day Linda wants to do her Christmas-dinner shopping. Sara's to come from Toronto tonight, and her boyfriend, James, will come for dinner on Christmas Day. Linda's eager to make this a successful dinner. She wants a large fresh turkey, around eighteen pounds, butterbasted. We go to Valu-mart, which has advertised such turkeys, but the largest they have is a little over thirteen pounds. Linda refuses it, but the store's not busy so we buy stuffing ingredients, some fresh broccoli, miniature carrots, frozen fiddleheads, extra butter for the plum pudding sauce. Linda also wants frozen raspberries and whipping cream. She says she's planning two desserts—an angel food cake with raspberries and whipped cream, as well as the plum pudding—in case James doesn't like the pudding. She finds a quart of whipping cream but can't find any raspberries. From there we drive on to Loblaws, which is very busy. I want to go straight to the turkey section, but Linda stops to look at shrimp rings and says we need one as an hors d'oeuvre. I wonder if James, who is Jewish, eats shrimp, but she's so cheerfully determined to make this a memorable meal that I don't have the heart to say anything. We go to the turkey section, where she finds some Maple Leaf "Prime" air-chilled birds, her favorite kind of fresh Canadian poultry, and she decides she must have one, even though they also are fairly small. I look around and can find only one large fresh turkey—a gourmet-brand free-range:, priced at fortyfive dollars—out of the couple of hundred that are on display. A clerk, who is restocking the turkeys as fast as they are scooped, tells me there are no other large ones of any brand. Linda's still clutching her Maple Leaf "Prime," which is obviously the one we have to get. I enjoy mince tarts at this time of year, and I suggest we buy some while we are here. Linda says no, she'd meant to bake some, and we should get some lard so she can bake this afternoon. We get some lard. I think she's right that she meant to bake tarts, but she has simply forgotten that this is one of the things she's usually done at Christmas. 142

Back home Linda looks exhausted from walking around the two stores, but she begins mixing pastry as soon as we've unpacked and put away the groceries. Every few minutes I hear her mutter "Jesus" when she's unable to remember or find something. But she's determined to go on. I volunteer to get her the tart tins and to prepare the mincemeat. She wants me to stand beside her while she measures the five cups of flour—she's worried she will miscount. We do four loads of tarts, at two dozen per load. Linda rolls the pastry, cuts it into circles, and tries to press the circles into the trays. But her hands are too unsteady, and she keeps breaking them. I take over that task and the spooning in of the mincemeat. I set the timer, transport the trays in and out of the oven, move the tarts from the trays to cooling racks, and wipe out the trays to get them ready for the next load. When we are almost finished we find that we're out of mincemeat but have pastry for another dozen tarts. In the back of the fridge I find the half-used jar of mincemeat—laced with additional rum and brandy—left over from when Linda baked tarts last year. I open and taste it. Tastes good to me. Linda's appalled. "If we use that rotten stuff," she says, "I won't eat a single tart. I won't be able to tell them apart!" I consider whether she's just contradicted herself, but I do agree to stop baking. She's very tired now, and she goes up to bed. I watch her go up the staircase in case she slips. Then I go back, roll the remaining pastry, and, using the old mincemeat, bake the last dozen tarts. I later store them carefully in a separate, smaller tin. I'll make sure I'm the only one to eat them! Around 4:30 there's a knock at the door, and our dogs begin barking. It's a Purolator delivery, a very large box with a seventeen-inch computer monitor that Sara has bought for her mother. I knew it was coming— Sara and I have been conferring by e-mail about it. The noise has awoken Linda, and she comes to the top of the stairs. I tell her that she has a big mystery box. She's as excited as a small child, especially when we open it and she discovers what it is. She asks me to carry it up and install it, and she goes to the phone to call Sara. I hook it up and turn it on, and it displays very well, even though the computer doesn't yet have the right driver. 143

Linda sits there trying out her favorite games and exclaiming how much more she can see. It's a wonderful gift, I think—Linda will spend more time looking at it than at any other object in her life. Sara will be so happy—she's probably worried that this could be the last of her mom's Christmases. Not that any of us talk about this. December 24,1999 It's been years since we've put up a Christmas tree. Linda's never liked Christmas. She's often told me that her childhood Christmases were awful, particularly after her father retired on a meager pension when she was eleven. He would go out drinking with friends his family didn't even know he had, and he'd usually manage to fall and knock over the tree at least once during the holidays. Her mother would sulk and try to extort expressions of affection from her daughters. Her father, she claimed, would fall asleep facedown in his food during every Christmas dinner, although not before he'd carved the overcooked turkey, saying over and over, "Thish turkey's jusht falling apart, Jackie." But Linda tried to make up a Christmas for us when our children were young. We'd have most of the standard Christmas package—tree, wreath on the door, stockings by the chimney, presents from Santa, paper tablecloth with poinsettia border, turkey dinner, plum pudding. Linda would sit on the floor most of Christmas morning with little Mike and Sara, helping them play with their new toys. We never sent Christmas cards, however, or put outdoor lights on the house. We never spiread decorations around the house beyond the tree. But Linda did have personal holiday traditions. She liked to watch Alastair Sim in A Christmas Carol late on Christmas Eve. Probably her second-favorite movie. She loved the possibility that there was hope for anyone, no matter how narrow their lives. She took pride in the plum pudding she made each year from a recipe she'd found from London's Savoy Hotel. "I can hear your pudding singing in the copper," I would say to her, and she would beam with happiness. She would cook with zest on Christmas Day, taking pride also in producing a moist, juicy turkey. 144

As the children grew older we gradually stopped putting up a tree and giving each other presents. Linda would give them money, saying that they knew best what they wanted. Soon all that was left was Alastair Sim and Linda's culinary Christmas. She enjoyed her Christmas cooking in France so much hi 1988-89 that for the next three years we rented an apartment near Nice for Christmas, usually taking Sara with us. Because Mike hadn't enjoyed France, he preferred to stay home. Here Linda enjoyed some of Christmas vicariously, amusedly watching the Ni^ois buying Christmas pine trees from stalls beneath their own native palm trees and rushing about as they did their shopping. And she spent Christmas Eve herself at small shops, or at the huge kypermarches Auchan or Leclerc, buying extraordinary things to cook the next day—quail, pheasant, guinea hens—and exotic wines to drink with them. I loved being inside her excitement. This Christmas, Linda has again given Mike and Sara money. I don't know how much. The monitor Sara's bought Linda will likely be the only gift we "exchange." I've had a very large red and white poinsettia sent to my mother at her nursing home in Abbotsford. For the first time I've also had one sent to Linda's mom. In past years I've thought that a gift for her was Linda's decision—and she usually sent nothing. But I couldn't think that this year, so I got Linda's consent to send something. Her mom phoned late last night to thank her—she was in tears, saying it was the biggest and reddest poinsettia she'd ever seen. Shades of Scrooge's turkey for the Cratchits. When Linda came to tell me about the call she was laughing, but her eyes were wet. Sara's spent much of the day setting up Linda's monitor—starting by downloading a driver from the manufacturer's Web site and installing it. This revealed that the video card in Linda's computer was too weak to support the monitor fully. I went out and bought a newer card, and together Sara and I opened up the computer, pulled out the old card, and replaced it. Linda kept coming by and anguishing about the fate of her computer while we worked. 145

Linda's actually been nervous all day, worrying that she will forget part of tomorrow's meal, worrying that she won't have enough food, worrying that I will forget to bring up the wines she wants from our cellar. Sara and I have talked her out of serving the shrimp ring. "James just won't eat it," Sara said. We've also talked her out of serving two desserts—Sara and I both think her two-dessert plan is a sign of her trying much too hard to produce a spectacular meal; we feel that it's important that she not take on more than she can manage and that the meal be a success. But now she's insisting on serving a bottle of champagne in midafternoon, before dinner. Sara and I have images of Linda staggering in the kitchen, or falling asleep before the meal is cooked. Sara talks to James on the phone, prompting him to decline champagne if Linda asks if he'd like her to serve some. Linda's also chronically cold, although the temperature in the house stays at around seventy. She has me boost the thermostat and then build a fire in the fireplace before we have dinner. It's an odd Cliristmas Eve. Sara and Mike and I watch the late news about the Indian Airlines plane that's been hijacked to Afghanistan. Linda's asleep. We are all in bed before midnight. December 25, 1999 I remember my first mother-in-law, Helen's mother, coming to breakfast every Christmas morning with the greeting "Has he been?"—meaning had Santa visited during the night. He hasn't been here. I get up with the dogs at 7:30 and begin a morning like any other, except there is no morning paper to read. Linda conies down around nine and has coffee and her decadron pill. Sara comes down shortly thereafter, and together they cook some oatmeal porridge for their breakfast. Mike appears around eleven. Linda's grumpy whenever we talk about dinner plans. She's decided we won't have champagne, because, she says accusingly to me, "You don't want it." She wants me to look for the white embroidered tablecloth from 146

India that she asked for some days ago, but when I get it she says it's "ugly" and that she wanted a different one—one I brought back from Delhi in 1986, which now has several small holes in it. I remind her about the holes, but her mind is made up and it's easier to find her the cloth she wants. It's soiled, I discover, so I put it in the washer. It often seems that the tumor makes it difficult for Linda to change her mind or to process new information. She doesn't want to hear about facts that might render questionable a decision she's made, like the size of the available turkeys on Thursday, or the tablecloth holes here. Sara and I agree privately that we can cover up the holes by strategically placing dishes or candle holders. By noon Linda has begun cleaning our four silver-plated candle holders. She hasn't found the silver polish—nor asked anyone where it might be— and so she's using copper polish. I find her the silver polish and she tells me the copper polish works better and is good enough for cheap silver. I recall Linda's delight in buying these classically simple American candle holders at a local auction, and I wonder about what she means by "cheap silver." We have an eighteenth-century hallmarked English cruet that I inherited, and she appears to be going to polish that as well. I ask her about it, and she says it can't stay around looking soiled and tarnished. I say I'd better put it away, and I put it in a cupboard in our back kitchen. But otherwise the day is going well. Sara and I stay close to the kitchen and rush in to find or lift things whenever Linda seems frustrated. She's never liked people in "her" kitchen while she cooks, and she still doesn't, but she seems glad today to have this occasional help. Each time something goes wrong she mutters "Jesus," as she did yesterday, and I joke to her that yes, it's Jesus's birthday. She's only slightly amused. She has the stuffing made, the turkey stuffed, the potatoes peeled and in water, ready to be boiled. She fries the turkey liver for us in the spicy pan in which she has prepared the stuffing, as she usually does—a stand-up snack. I am still worried she is going to exhaust herself before dinner. She gets the turkey into the oven at three. James arrives at 3:20, and Linda announces that she must absolutely open a bottle of wine. The cook needs a drink, H7

she says, requesting some chilled white wine. I figure one bottle among five people won't hurt—as long as the rest of us drink our share. I bring a bottle of 1998 Kim Crawford New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc—a wine so good that it sold out within hours of being released in Ontario, so good that friends were offering Sara and me double the release price when they heard we had managed to secure half a case. Linda's forgotten this, however, and she looks dubiously at the bottle as if I am trying to pass off some cheap hootch. "Well, if we must drink this," she says. But she hasn't forgotten how to taste and is soon exclaiming about how good it is. Fortunately, Sara and James help me out by drinking at the same rate she does. Not much to say. The meal went well. The turkey was slightly overcooked but not "falling apart." The broccoli was firm and so were the fiddleheads. The gravy was good. Linda ate a small serving of everything. The 1995 California Pinot Noir was extremely good, and Linda enjoyed it while lamenting how much the prices of California Pinot Noir had gone up since we had bought it. James left quite a bit of his plum pudding, but he ate all the rum sauce. I don't think Linda noticed. She was very tired and went to bed soon after we had all finished. She assigned Mike and me to wash the Limoges plates and serving dishes, but shortly before she left he became annoyed that she had casually dismissed one of his opinions out of hand and silently stormed upstairs to his room. He's been storming to his room after real or imaginary slights by her since he was four. Now he's thirty, and he's still desperate to have her approval, even though her tumor renders it—or her disapproval—of fluctuating value. This time I don't think she understood that he'd felt slighted, or cared why he'd left the room. She probably thought he'd gone to the John. I pretended I hadn't understood too. I had all the Limoges and most of the Riedel glasses washed and dried before he came back. Sara came to the kitchen before he did and dried and put away a number of the glasses. December 26,1999 I've been feeling grateful all day that yesterday passed so well. Although there was a bad moment this morning, at least for me, when Linda and I 148

were sitting drinking coffee and could hear Sara and James coming. Linda said, "Remind me to offer to make that stuff I make with eggs and bread— what's it called?" "French toast," I suggested. It's one of the things she couldn't remember the name of back in April when we first realized she was in trouble. Sara and James have now gone back to Toronto to prepare for their New Year's party. None of us went out Boxing Day shopping—there was nothing we wanted. I look around and see far too many things in a house I may soon, for one reason or another, want to sell or move away from. December 29,1999 - We took Seizer to the vet yesterday for his hip and elbow X-ray and for a cardiac ultrasound—all of these being preliminary checks that one should do before a dog is bred. To my annoyance, Linda insisted on going—maybe because she'd never known Scott to do such checks. I've been slowly getting used to handling such matters myself, but I don't do them as well when Linda is there and I have to cope with her unpredictability as well as with the task itself. We've also had sharp differences about how the X-rays should be done. I've seen dogs become utterly malleable when sedated, and Linda hasn't, and so she insisted that Seizer have a general anesthetic and pushed me away when I tried to argue that we should try to work with only sedation. We've both heard of numbers of dogs mysteriously dying under anesthetic. I also don't trust Linda's judgment about such things anymore, in fact I tend unfairly to mistrust, as my first response, anything she believes. However, Seizer endured the anesthetic, and he appears to have decent hip and elbow joints and a thoroughly normal heart. The only hitch was that neither of us reminded the veterinary assistants who did the X-rays to burn his American registration number into the film. I might have remembered had Linda not earnestly taken over the role of spokesperson. As a result, the U.S. animal orthopedic service that evaluates the X-rays won't be able to register the evaluation with the American Kennel Club. 149

Today Linda's quite different. She's worried about the MRI scan she will get tomorrow and says she thinks she's feeling more lethargic, tired, and forgetful than she should be. Says she hasn't felt this sleepy for several months—implying that her sleepiness may be due to new tumor growth rather than to the chemotherapy. I tell her that the side effects of chemo can be long-lasting, that perhaps all she's feeling is fatigue from the continuing depletion of her blood cells. She says sadly that she doubts it. She thinks the chemo may not be working. "Look at my hair," she says, taking off her little cap. "It's almost totally grown back. It's not supposed to." I laugh at her and say that most of the dying cancer patients you see on TV are bald—that maybe her hair growth is a good sign. Maybe the chemo can kill either hair or tumor but not both. She's amused but not cheered up. "We'll see soon," she says. And indeed we will. I'm feeling low myself tonight, partly, I recognize, because I went to a bankruptcy auction this morning and bought nothing. The bids on the few things I might have bought—an old Pentium 133 computer for my office, a twenty-eight-foot ladder for Mike to use when painting the eaves of the house—were, in my opinion, bizarrely high. And there are no more auctions until the second week of the new year. I tend to cheer myself up these days by getting bargains at auctions, or wins at dog shows. In the last week of November I got a pair of large Wharfedale speakers for five dollars each—I gave them to Sara—and an RCA twenty-seven-inch stereo TV for fifty-five dollars, which I keep in my room. I also watch the stock market each day, absurdly following the day-by-day progress of my longterm RRSP investments. The markets have been up pretty well every day for the last month, but none of this seems to have cheered me. January i, 2000 Linda's male African finch has died, probably late Thursday. I noticed that the radiators in the house were cool when I got up to take Linda for her MRI, but in my rushing about to feed the dogs and get ready I didn't think to look further. When we got back the house temperature was just 150

over sixty. Unable to restart the furnace, I called the gas company, which quickly sent a repairman who had the furnace running again by 3:30. By that time the temperature had fallen below sixty. Apparently the thermocouple had burned out. The bird was in a room that is always somewhat cool in the winter. None of us thought about him. He must have died of hypothermia. I wonder today if Linda's purchase of this finch late in the fall of 1998— actually a pair of finches—was another early sign of her illness. We had never had birds before, and she had never, in our thirty years together, mentioned wanting one. But one day she returned from buying aquarium supplies at a pet store with a cage and the two finches. She hung the cage in our solarium among the palm trees and hanging ferns she was no longer watering—a room no one sits in, a floor below the bedroom and study where she spends most of her time. For a while she tended to the birds. But our cat acrobatically managed to batter the cage until a feeder came loose and the female finch emerged for him to catch and eat. Linda talked about getting another companion for the now-lonely male, who would sing longer and more plaintively than ever before. But she didn't, and gradually Michael had to take over feeding it and looking after its cage, much as he'd had to take over care of the plants. Michael was away in Toronto when the furnace failed, and he got back shortly after I'd called for a repairman. The bird didn't quite make it to the looos. That was what many people at John and Shirley's New Year's Eve party last night were excited about— having lived long enough to experience both the 19005 and the zooos. "We did it, we lived to 2000!" some exclaimed to Linda at midnight, unaware that living to 2000 has been more work for some than others. One older man even said to her with apparent astonishment, "Hey, we'll have two different centuries on our tombstones, nineteen-something to twentysomething!" He must have been puzzled by her lack of response. Linda looked very frail all evening, as if she's lost height as well as weight. We almost didn't get to the party because she went to bed for a 151

nap and fell into a deep sleep right after supper. I tried to wake her at nine, but I couldn't break the rhythm of her soft snoring. I tried again at ten, and I managed to get her to talk to me. She complained, without opening her eyes that I hadn't woken her soon enough and then fell back asleep. But I must have disturbed her, because at around 10:15 she got UP thinking I hadn't called her at all, and she got dressed and put her wig and makeup on. Michael had taken our Honda to visit friends in Windsor, so we had to go in our Safari van. She had difficulty climbing up ini:o it, muttering "I hate this van," and then at the party she had difficulty getting up out of her chair. She had to ask me to help her up, or to bring her food or wine. At midnight she got up and kissed me—I was expecting just a ceremonial kiss, but she kissed me as long and passionately as she had thirty-two New Year's Eves ago, at the Royal Roads faculty party in Victoria, when we were married to other people and only playing with the possibility of getting together. I know she was telling me she remembered. We came home almost immediately after midnight:. She went to lie down and watch a videotaped program, and within minutes the VCR jammed. Not a YiK problem—just a cheap and overused VCR. I spent much of today searching the Internet for a replacement, but I will likely buy one in a store tomorrow. January 2, 2000 Managed to buy a VCR early this morning, at a holiday sale, for eighty dollars. It has a one-year total-replacement warranty. It: would be nice to need it. The salesman grinned, "You should throw it away if it breaks down and buy another one like it." I didn't laugh. Back home I had it set up and playing one of Linda's tapes within a few minutes. She's so pleased—it's as if Santa has paid a second visit. January 4, 2000 Last night one of Linda's law colleagues, David Dolson, phoned from Toronto to wish her a happy New Year. We had just finished dinner and were working on the last of a bottle of 1995 Rosemount Shiraz, which, 152

just before the phone rang, Linda had complimented for its high alcohol content. I sat at the dinner table finishing my wine while Linda talked in the next room, mainly about other colleagues and David's children. Then about the Law Society and its clumsy auditing procedures. After a couple of minutes Linda called me to bring her her wine and cigarettes. When I sat down again I could hear her swearing David to secrecy. "I'm going to tell you something no one else knows," she said. "Not Michael (meaning Michael Baker, a lawyer she and David had both worked closely with), not Ben (Ben Sischy, an elderly judge and former litigation lawyer who had been something of a mentor to both Linda and Michael), not even my sister or my mother." Then she told him about her tumor. Poor guy, I thought, he phones to bring holiday cheer and gets hit with this news. It was fascinating, though, to hear for the first time Linda try to describe her situation on her own. One surprise was that she linked the tumor to her retiring from the law back in 1994. "I knew back then that my brain wasn't working right," she told him, "and that I couldn't do things as well as I should." Also news to me was that she thought she might have about two years. How much time she may have is not a subject she and I talk about a lot. But why was she telling these things to David? She wants him to fix things up with the Law Society for her, to try to wind up her trust account, which she tells him she should have "billed out" when she stopped practicing but didn't because, ethically, she didn't feel she deserved the money. But every year since then there's been this small amount of money there that seems to belong to no one that it can be given to, and this money earns interest, and has to be accounted for each year to the society. Linda tells David that she doesn't want me to be stuck dealing with it. I think to myself that I wouldn't deal with it, that I'd belligerently tell the Law Society that the account was none of my business, that they could take the damn thing and shove it. I've often felt that way about it in recent years, when Linda had to pay several hundred dollars of our money—my salary—in accounting fees just to get the society off her back for another year. 153

January 6, 2000 Twelfth Night, the night Linda used to insist on our taking down the Christmas decorations, except this year, like most of the last few, we have no decorations. I usually put a wreath on the front door—to Linda's annoyance—but this year I forgot. She's fallen asleep early. She spent most of the day shopping for groceries with Michael and then making satin balls for the dogs. Her computer has been giving her problems. All she uses it for is email and playing card games and mah-jongg, but its two-gig hard drive is full, and she doesn't want it replaced in case doing that disturbs her favorite software. I've been searching on the eBay Internet auction site for a small supplementary hard drive, but without much luck. Bidders are willing to pay $130 for used 6.4 gigabyte drives, while 13.2 ones are available on sale from time to time locally for as little as $160.1 have a four-gigabyte notebook drive left over from the last time I updated my laptop, and I've now found adapters for sale on eBay that should let me install it for Linda. And of course there's always the unspoken question of how big a drive she really needs, how long she'll need her computer, how long she'll be able to use it. I don't like those questions, or finding myself thinking about them. She also wants me to find a third VCR to have in case one of the other two fails. Like her computer, her VCRs have become essential to her. Days without these devices are torture to her now that she can't read or talk to friends. I think we're all starting to worry about her appointment at the Cancer Center this Monday. Sara phoned a few hours ago to say she was coming to visit this weekend and was considering staying until late Monday so she could go to the center with us. I find myself watching Linda's behavior closely, noting every faltering in her speech, every blank look during a conversation. January 7, 2000 Was thinking again of Linda's New Year's kiss. How it might have been if, in the years between that kiss of New Year's Eve 1968 and the kiss 154

of 2000, our lips had not parted. I first met Linda at a New Year's party on the last day of 1967. She was Roger's mysterious wife, the one he told his colleagues at the college he had left in Vancouver because "She didn't want to give up her work." Linda later told me that he had said nothing to her about his new job teaching in Victoria, the house he had bought there, nor asked her to go with him—she had come home one early-September evening and there was a note on the table. His guitar, banjo, Jaguar roadster that she'd help buy, and clothes were gone. With his lakeside house, his E-type Jag, his penchant for giving parties, his understated wit, his impromptu but professional folksinging performances, Roger had, by October, become one of the centers of faculty social life. But there was still no Linda. He began minor renovations to his new house. Every other week he would drive to Vancouver and return in a huge black Jaguar saloon that he said his wife had recently bought for four hundred dollars and that he was borrowing to haul building materials. If his wife was as interesting and attractive as he, people said, she must be quite a babe. She appeared at the college New Year's party, and she was. But for most of the evening Roger ignored her, preferring the company of two Vancouver friends who had come with her. My wife, Helen, didn't much enjoy dancing. I asked Linda to dance. I discovered she knew me. As a teenager she had bought and read Tish, the poetry newsletter I had edited at university in the early sixties. She had heard me read at poetry readings. I saw very little of her until the next fall, when she came to live with Roger and attend the university. This time it was Helen who was fascinated by Linda. She had the idea that Linda had impeccable fashion sense and began phoning her about what she was planning to wear to college events. She began saying that Linda had a classic beauty and would never look old or have to worry about her looks. That November Helen and I quarreled over whether to attend the university faculty New Year's party or the one at Roads. Helen was in a graduate program at the university and had several faculty friends—some closer than I then realized. This quarrel was one of 155

"Professors Davey and Tallentire with their wives," Christmas 1968.

a number we'd had. I unwisely baited her by quipping that I wanted to go the Roads party so I could kiss Linda at midnight. That led Helen, at the Royal Roads Christmas Ball, to try to embarrass me several times by telling other faculty members I wanted to kiss Linda on New Year's Eve. There's a photograph of Helen and me and Linda and Roger together at that ball. The student editors of the 1969 Royal Roads yearbook mischievously published it under the title "Professors Davey and Tallentire and their wives." Early New Year's Eve day it began to snow. A record thirty-five inches fell before evening. The city—which at that time owned only one snowplow, so rarely did it snow—was paralyzed. The university faculty party was canceled. With a disappointed and grumpy Helen, I drove out to the Roads party. Everyone had to park at the gates and walk half a mile 156

through unplowed snow to the college buildings. I had no idea that Linda had heard about Helen's teasing. At the stroke of midnight she ran across the wardroom and threw herself into my arms, her mouth open. We kissed every part of each other's mouths for the entire length of "Auld Lang Syne." In the thirty years since, I have never asked her why, although it was obviously at least in part a performance. But also in part a gift. A few weeks later Helen and I agreed to separate. Our cumulative disagreements had little if anything to do with Linda, although how I viewed them must have been changed that New Year's Eve. I remember driving home from the party through the miraculously snowy streets, thinking that the light reflected from streetlights and moon was different from how it had been before. That the world held possibilities that I had overlooked or forgotten. I wish I could tell Linda that she had given me that. And thank her. Helen said little, and nothing about the midnight kiss. She had her own amours, I found out later, which she probably thought were more serious. January 8, 2000 Got up this morning full of plans to upgrade Linda's computer so that it's faster and easier for her to use. I bought a Windows 98 upgrade kit yesterday, which should stop some of the error messages that she's been getting. And I've found a cable for an old eight-hundred-megabyte hard drive that Sara and I can install temporarily as a second drive to relieve the crowding on her C drive. I'm editing articles for Open Letter on my own computer when Mike comes up and says that he's been out in our Honda and has rear-ended another car while pulling onto Wharncliffe Road from a side street. He thinks the brakes failed, although after he got the car going again and was bringing it back home they worked perfectly. He's arranged to pay cash—$250—to the other driver for the damage to his car. Of course it's my cash he's arranged to pay—he has no money or job, and he gives little concrete indication of ever seeking employment. He says he's borrowing my money. He wants to cash in his insurance 157

policy to pay me back. I ask him whether it wouldn't make more sense to find a job in order to get the money. He shrugs and agrees that it might. The damage to the Honda is more extensive—a crumpled fender, crushed headlight mounting, a crushed parking light, and a loosened front bumper. I tell him that the car—a 1988 model that Linda bought while practicing law—probably isn't worth fixing and that we may just have to do without a second vehicle and use taxis whenever his mom has an appointment while I'm using the van. We might have to use taxis for his mom all the time, since she's become too weak to climb up easily into the van. He looks distressed and says that in this case he'll find the money to fix it—in the insurance policy—and do most of the repairs himself. I remind him with a smile that it's only because of his mother's illness that we happen to have a car that had become, in effect, exclusively his to use, and that most thirty-year-old men have to buy their own cars and insurance and gas and oil. He smiles back ruefully and says he knows we've been very good to him. He goes outside and begins dismantling the damaged parts of the car. I go down to Linda in her study, where she is trying to read e-mail, and I discover that Mike's already told her his story. I tell her that even if he's able to make temporary repairs to the Honda so that it has headlights and signals, we still won't be able to use it until I get the brakes checked. She's very calm, almost as if she's unable to experience any feelings about the incident. She doesn't think there's anything wrong with the brakes. She doesn't want me to make too much of the matter. We should let Mike pay the other driver and get the Honda repaired the way he wants. I go away feeling depressed and angry that so much is going wrong—that the more I work to improve things, the more they fall apart. I think again about Mike's joblessness and decide that this isn't the best time to worry about it. We do need him at home right now. And perhaps at his age it's his problem, not mine.

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January 9, 2000 Had a decent day yesterday. Sara and I installed the Windows 98 upgrade into Linda's computer and then installed and reformatted the second hard drive. Had a tricky moment when we realized we had to reach into a cramped and dimly lit space and change the jumpers on the CD-ROM drive to make it become the "primary slave" drive rather than the "secondary master." Linda was lurking in the background, worrying that her computer was never going to work again, so we were relieved when it rebooted perfectly. Sara's become something of a professional with software, but we're both duffers when it comes to changing hardware. Meanwhile, Mike was working on the Honda in the driveway, coming in from time to time to ask me to go out and buy him another tool he'd discovered he needed. Fortunately there's a Canadian Tire automotive store about five blocks away. At dinner, during our second bottle of wine, Linda begins to talk of her worries about her appointment tomorrow. She's sure that she's worse and that the chemo's not working. She again points to her hair, which has been growing back impressively, as evidence of the chemo failure. "It's my brain," she says, "I should know how well it's working." She thinks it's time we talked about funeral arrangements. All three of us—Mike, Sara, myself—try to keep the conversation lighthearted. Linda says, "I don't want a funeral, don't want a memorial service." I wonder to myself if she's worried that no one would come. She'd like to donate her body for organ transplants, but she suspects her organs might not be usable after all her chemotherapy. She thinks she might just donate her body to science, for medical students to use. They might be interested in her tumor. But maybe we want something of her to be left. In that case she'd want to be cremated. "But you'd have to decide what to do after that," she says. She says she'd be happy to be in another jar on the fireplace mantle beside the ashes of Siggie and Soren. But maybe we would prefer to have her interred so that there was place where we could come and visit her. She addresses this to Sara and Mike. They don't really express a preference. I say that 159

I'm already wondering what I'm going to do with the jars of Siggie's and Soren's ashes and feeling awkward about bequeathing them to Mike and Sara to look after for the rest of their lives. "All I need," I joke, "is another jar on the mantle." Linda then says sardonically to Sara, that I evidently don't want her on my mantle, but that there's got to be some place for her. Maybe, she suggests, we could put her ashes and Soren's and Siggie's into the same urn and bury it somewhere. Linda then becomes preoccupied with how much ash there would be and with whether we received all of Siggie's ashes, which are in a smaller urn than Soren's, even though he was a slightly larger dog. Mike tries to calculate the carbon content of a i5O-pound body and how much would be left after cremation. He thinks maybe twenty-five pounds of carbon, of which ten might remain. Linda has him weigh the two urns—Siggie's is eight pounds, Soren's ten. The clay of Soren's urn probably weighs more too, we think. The discussion peters out when our current dogs crowd around the table, sniffing at our leftovers, and we have to clear the dishes quickly and get all the chicken bones safely into the garbage. January 10, 2000 Looks like Linda had good reason to worry about today's appointment, although she left it more cheerful than she's left any of her earlier ones. I didn't get to see her MRI or to talk to Dr. Macdonald. She decided I should stay home this morning and place our 1998 Bordeaux futures orders with the LCBO. With the telephone line for ordering opening at 9 A.M. and supplies rumored to be limited, she feared that most of the wines we wanted would be sold out by the end of the morning. I had trouble getting to sleep last night and messed up setting my alarm clock. I was awoken at 7:45 by Stevie barking. We'd planned to leave for the Cancer Center at 8:10.1 woke Linda, got dressed, and discovered that Sara had already made coffee. We were all in the van by 8:15, and I was able to drop Linda and the children at the center on time for her 8:30 blood test. Back at home it took me until 9:45 to get through to the LCBO switch160

board, although I did get all the wines Linda had wanted to order. "You are lucky," the young woman who took my order told me. I hope I am. When I got back to the Cancer Center at 10:051 discovered that for the first time ever Dr. Macdonald had seen Linda earlier than scheduled, and that her consultation was over. She was waiting only for a prescription to be filled by the center's pharmacy. This is the account I received from Mike and Sara. Dr. Macdonald had begun by saying he had good news and bad news. The good news is that the original egg-shaped tumor has shrunk. Mike said that it's now about two-thirds its original size and probably only half of its original mass, and it's no longer intruding into and distorting her left ventricle. The bad news is that more than half of the tumor area stained bright white on the MRI—the white indicating the newer, faster-growing infiltrative tumor cells. Mike thinks that these cells are at least six times as numerous as they were on the MRI of two months ago. The chemotherapy of the last two months may have had some effect on the original tumor (although Mike suspects that it may have been shrinking because of the earlier radiation), but it has clearly not had any effect on the new, aggressive tumor cells. The last two months of treatment may have been a total waste. Mike estimates that if the new cells are to continue to multiply over the next two months as rapidly as they have in the past two, Linda will be near death. Dr. Macdonald didn't say any of these things, of course. He merely presented the slides and answered the technical and interpretive questions Mike and Sara asked. He recommended changing the chemotherapy, trying another drug. Mike thought the need for such a change was selfevident. The drug Dr. Macdonald wants to try is temozolomide, a newly approved drug that has had some excellent results in trials, but which is extremely expensive—more than two thousand dollars for a month's treatment. He's not sure that our Blue Cross insurance will cover this. If it won't, there are less expensive alternatives. Mike and Sara ask whether these alternatives are as effective, and he replies that they might be more 161

effective—it all depends on the tumor and its susceptibilities. Without having another biopsy done, he can't be sure of the tumor's precise characteristics. When I arrive at the center, Linda and the kids are: awaiting news of whether Blue Cross will pay for Dr. Macdonald's preferred drug. Linda is both tense and cheerful. She's happy that she's no longer going to have to take the old drugs, which prevented her from drinking wine and eating chocolate. The new, expensive drug comes with no dietary restrictions. But she's pessimistic about Blue Cross paying for it. She says if they don't pay for it she will just have to go home and die. Mike tries to tell her the cheaper drugs may be as good or even better, but she (doesn't remember that. I tell her that we would find the money somewhere, but she doesn't seem interested in thinking of this. The nurse comes in with the actual prescription and says that the center's pharmacy will contact Blue Cross as soon as we come over with the prescription. Linda and Sara walk across the concourse to the pharmacy, while Mike and I look for the secretary who can book Linda's next appointment, on February 7. Then we go the pharmacy waiting area and meet Linda and Sara. Linda seems very stressed and has difficulty telling me what is happening. I suggest we sit down, and she accuses me of not listening to her. It turns out she wants to go outside and have a cigarette. She's had only part of one since I woke her. Mike helps her find her way outside and stays with her. Sara tries to summarize for me the MRI results and Dr. Macdonald's comments. A few minutes after Linda and Mike get back the pharmacy clerk calls to us. Blue Cross will pay for the drugs. They are ready for us. As we walk to our van Sara reads the invoice that's attached to them: $2,240.26— $2,039.18 for the temozolomide and $201.08 for twenty tablets of the antinausea drug ondansetron that Linda must take with it. Linda's cheerful again. She says we can drink a good wine with dinner. We are all feeling better because Linda is happier, and during most of the drive home we are happy in the illusion of a bright new future contained in that $2,200 bag of capsules. 162

But when I take Sara to the train station we are not as cheerful. Dr. Macdonald was optimistic about the new medication, Sara observes, but he didn't say it was a silver bullet. I say that he was optimistic about the other chemotherapy drugs too. After dinner tonight, Mike is also pensive. It was really not good news, he says to me, although Dr. Macdonald tried to use the good-news/bad-news cliche to hide that. These tumor cells are much more virulent than the last, and the last almost killed her. He wonders if the next MRI, scheduled for two months hence, will be soon enough. If the new drug isn't effective Linda could have serious new symptoms within weeks, he thinks, and we might have to urge Dr. Macdonald to change his prescription again. Linda, however, enjoyed the pork roast she cooked, our bottle of Barbera d'Alba, and the chocolate ice cream she took up to bed. A few minutes later she called me to get her the antinausea pill she is to take half an hour before the new chemotherapy—half an hour before the time we'd agreed she'd begin. She's impatient to be healed. January n, 2000 This morning I found myself wondering whether Linda might not now be in much better shape if the Cancer Center error hadn't kept her out of the drug trial. The original, low-grade tumor has responded impressively to both the radiation and chemotherapies. Might it have responded even better if these had been given concurrently rather than consecutively? Would it have transformed part of itself into the more aggressive tumor she has now? Is there anything I could have done to have made that happen? I can hardly remember now what the circumstances around that error were. Of course half the patients in that trial were a control group that received only the same conventional radiation therapy that Linda received. If she'd been in that half of the study her tumor would be the same as it is now. Linda's responded okay so far to the new chemo. She had no nausea overnight and seems as happy and active today as she was yesterday. She's downstairs now, working at cooking some chicken breasts in white wine. 163

There was a new note today from George, entitled "Hate December and 2000." He's just had prostate surgery. I surmise that he probably postponed the operation while Angela was ill. I bet thait it was painful. I send back this "cut-and-paste" reply: Oooh, that does sound nasty, George. I thought they might have more civilized procedures for those prostate thingies. It's something I have given some unpleasant thought to, since my dad twice had even more primitive surgery of a similar kind. George Bowering wrote: >I havejust had a nasty little prostate operation, thing called the TUPR procedure, >whereby they send an electric weed-whacker up yr penis and slash your prostate >mostly away, so you can pee. They tried a spinal and it didnt work, so they gave >me a total, which meant lots of morphine and opium after I vioke up, so there has >been a lot to recover from. > >Plus I have a virus infection in my right eye. That's expensive. > >I am weak and now pleasnatly engaged with life, as you might imagine.

Hmmm, you are probably seized with monastic contemplitude. Maybe you cd con somebody into giving you more morphine. >That is really complicated, that situation in which Linda's sister, not knowing the >facts, wonders whether Linda will come out and help with her mother. You get this >age, Frank, and everything comes down on you, in tangles.

Yes, what else have we done to deserve this, except to get to this age. Well, Linda's mom is back home & apparently stable & feeling well enough to feel sorry for herself, and Linda's sister is back in Red Deer or Moose Jaw or with whatever prairie animal she lives. Naw, her husband's ok. Linda's recent MRI was bad—the part of the tumor that's morphed into a more rapid-growing variety has been unaffected by the last two months of chemo, & is now 6 times as large as two months ago. Pissing off to have effectively "lost" those months. Her docs have changed her chemo to a newly approved drug that costs $2200 a month. Ain't that scary. Fortunately Blue Cross is covering it. While we were sitting in the cancer center waiting to find out if Blue Cr wd, Linda is saying that maybe she'll just have to go home and die. Of course we wd have found the money ... 164

But if this new drug doesn't slow down this new tumor tissue, things will be very bad for her in a month or two. & she's so damn cheerful. Even excited that she's allowed to drink wine & eat chocolate with the new drug. Guess I shdn't say keep the ol' pecker up.

January 13, 2000 So far no change in Linda, and no bad responses to the temozolomide. Mike still thinks that Dr. Macdonald was underplaying the seriousness of the new tumor growth. He speculates that once it begins growing outside the boundaries of the original tumor its effects could be quite sudden and calamitous, particularly since the original tumor, before treatment, had nearly made Linda comatose. But I comment that Dr. Macdonald was right to try not to alarm Linda, even though his prescribing of this new, extremely toxic and expensive drug could be interpreted as a desperate measure. I said to Mike last night that Macdonald's efforts to stop tumors seem much like hunting groundhogs in the dark. You don't know where the groundhog is or what weapons are likely to hit it, and so you have to use one that can hit a wide area—a shotgun, or maybe a trench mortar, or poison gas. The doctor is guessing, and he may easily have guessed wrong again. But Linda does remain cheerful and somewhat amused at the expense of the pills and at the five-day dosage, which seems so short after the five weeks of radiation and the fourteen-day courses of procarbazine. I think she's under the understandable illusion that things are somehow "better." Mike says she didn't ask Dr. Macdonald about whether she'd be able to donate her organs for transplant. And she seems unaware that Mike and I are now watching her closely and anxiously. She helps me grind Seizer and Stevie's toenails this morning, with me holding the dog still and her doing the grinding. She does a good job. I wonder if she'll be able to do this next month. Seizer has a show here in London this weekend—five blocks away, at the fairgrounds. He's taking pills too—the biopsy on his lumps showed them to be hives. I've been giving him four antihistamines a day in an effort to make the lumps 165

disappear before tomorrow morning. I'm not sure how many other shows he'll have this year. So much depends on how Linda is, how much care she needs, or even whether she's still with us. I may want to get away from an empty house and go to shows. Or maybe I'll want to stay home and work on a new book. At the moment I'm having a hard time thinking about shows or books, or getting interested in them. January 15, 2000 • When John and Shirley were visiting last night, Mike volunteered to look up what was known about temozolomide on the Internet. He came back with a description of the drug and the results of one—perhaps the only—clinical trial and gave them to John, who read through them and then read aloud what he thought were the relevant passages. Conducted on 162 patients, the trial had led to the drug being "push" licensed for brain tumors—that is, given a licence allowing a drug company to produce it and sell it at a high price, even though the number of patients in need of it is very small. It was licensed specifically for use on tumors that had already been treated with radiation and conventional chemotherapies but which had stopped responding to treatment—tumors like Linda's. The findings of the trial were based on fifty-four patients—there was no indication of what happened to the other 108. Of the fifty-four, a surprising nine percent had experienced a complete cure; twenty-seven percent had had a significant remission. In brain tumor treatment this is a very good result—even though sixty-four percent experienced no diminishing of tumor growth and probably died. I didn't say this in front of Linda. Instead I said to John that thirty-six percent of the patients must have benefitted significantly. He agreed. Of course I don't really like any of these statistics. I felt Linda was pretty well guaranteed some improvement from the radiation therapy. A sixty-four-percent chance that the present treatment will leave Linda's tumor growing unhampered is very different—especially with her tumor's recent rate of growth. A nine-percent possibility of total cure is nice if 166

you happen to be one of those nine percent. Total cure was not something we had thought possible from radiation therapy. Temozolomide therapy seems very much like throwing dice. All or (more likely) nothing. Betty Lou needs a new pair of hemispheres. Linda got up early this morning to go out with me to the Vintages wine release. We wanted two bottles of the E&E Barossa Shiraz, which had been rated third by the Wine Spectator on their "Top 100" list of 1999 wine releases, at ninety-seven points out of a hundred. We got to the store half an hour before opening time and were the first in line. The store had been allotted twenty-four bottles of the E&E and was restricting them to one per person, but by five minutes before opening there were more than forty people in line. Brenda, the Vintages manager, who knows Linda has been seriously ill but doesn't know the cause, sees us outside in the cold— it's just above freezing today—and she rushes out and gives Linda a hug and invites us and most of the people behind us to wait in the interior corridor. We buy two of the E&E and a lot of other newly released wines, mostly ready-to-drink Barberas, Malbecs, and Temperanillos—we spend about four hundred dollars. Linda is delighted, and she clearly expects to be able to drink most of them. We also get nine bottles of various wines for John and Shirley, who want one of the bottles of E&E so they can share it with us. An amazing and sweet offer. It's also the most expensive bottle of wine, at fifty-five dollars, they've ever bought. January 16, 2000 Last night I retrieved the temozolomide reports from Mike and read them myself. They are not anywhere near as encouraging as they seemed when John looked at them—I suspect he was putting the best face on them. The twenty-seven-percent figure he cited was from a 1997 British trial report, and it was the total number of patients in that trial—seventyfive in all—who experienced some tumor shrinkage. The report concluded that "temozolomide is a well-tolerated palliative agent with activity in patients with malignant glioma but the duration of the responses are short." 167

"Palliative." "Short." The nine-percent figure came from a 1999 American Food and Drug Agency press release that reported a trial involving fiftyfour patients whose anaplastic astrocytomas had become resistant to lomustine and procarbazine. In this trial only twenty-two percent had benefitted, with thirteen percent experiencing "partial shrinkage of their tumors" and nine percent having a "complete response." "Complete response" evidently does not mean total destruction of the tumor but rather a temporary shrinkage of all parts of it. The report announces that on the basis of this trial temozolomide has been granted "accelerated approval" by the FDA and remarks that "[ajccelerated approval is based on surrogate markers of effectiveness such as shrinkage of a tumor rather than a documented effect on clinical benefit such as survival or quality of life." Even these carefully limited claims for the drug's short-term effectiveness are difficult to interpret in Linda's case. We know she began with an oligodendroglioma, but Dr. Macdonald has indicated that the type of the new tumor is undeterminable without a biopsy and that a biopsy might only give information about part of it. It is possible that she now has a glioma like the patients in the 1997 British trial. Or she might have an anaplastic astrocytoma like those in the other trial, although that is a "high grade," very fast-growing tumor rather than the "medium grade," which Dr Macdonald believes Linda's to be. Or . . . ? Linda tells me this morning that she is continuing to feel weak and fatigued. She has also been reporting over the past few weeks that she feels very cold, even in rooms heated to seventy-two degrees. She's felt most comfortable over the past few days either in bed under her duvet or in her study with the door closed—here the large, heated aquarium keeps the air temperature around seventy-seven degrees. Mike thinks the fatigue is a very bad sign—he notes that only four percent of the trial patients reported fatigue as a side effect. I wonder if this fatigue really was a sideeffect—it's so difficult, it seems to me, to distinguish between drug side effects and symptoms of a tumor. She's thinking of going with me to the dog show today. Seizer's done 168

well this weekend, taking a Group fourth on Friday for fifty-six points and winning Best of Breed again yesterday for a further eight. But it's my remark that people at the show are asking after her and are worried about her because she looked so ill at the August specialties that has her thinking of going. "I could show them I'm very much alive," she said yesterday. But this morning she's more concerned about her tiredness. For the first night in some time she fell asleep without taking a sleeping pill to counteract the sleeplessness her decadron medication gives her, and she had a restless, troubled sleep most of the night. She says with a smile that this must be a side effect of the temozolomide, and I quip back that it's one powerful drug. But I suspect she doesn't believe this. January 21, 2000 Yesterday Linda's phone rang with the distinctive long-distance ring. She was playing mah-jongg on her computer in her overheated study, and she promptly answered it. She was puzzled by whatever the caller was saying and said that she didn't understand, was no longer dealing with such inquiries, and whoever it was should speak to her husband. No, she said, her husband had his own telephone number, but she couldn't remember it. No, it was in the same house. "I'm having medical problems," she said. "I don't remember it. But it's in the telephone book, at the same address." I still don't know who the caller was—they haven't yet called me or left a message on my answering service. At first I wondered if it was the Royal Bank, perhaps calling about an overdrawn account. But I checked the accounts and they seem okay. Perhaps it was another creditor, possibly one of Linda's that she's forgotten to tell me about. She has a lot of legal files at a Toronto moving company that stores such things, and I haven't seen the bills for these in several years. Could the call have been about them? I thought perhaps she had put those bills on automatic payment through one of our bank accounts. I should find out. Overall, however, she hasn't been doing badly. It's very difficult to tell whether her illness is stable. She says she's had to take sleeping pills for 169

the past few nights, that she doesn't fall asleep on her own. And she hasn't been falling asleep in the daytime. These are probably good signs, since when her tumor was large it made it hard for her to stay awake. But she has been sleeping in very late in the mornings—until close to noon. This is a new pattern, but it could be caused by the sleeping pills as much as by the tumor. Today she was asleep when I got up at seven, and she's still asleep now, at 11:30. She continues to be very sensitive to cold and uncomfortable in rooms in which the temperature is lower than seventy-two degrees. Mike says that this could be caused by stress and anxiety, but I don't see her showing any other signs of stress. Often, though, she does end her observations about her new limitations poignantly by saying, cheerfully, "But that's all right," as if reassuring someone. Like yesterday, when she commented that she enjoys a lot of television reruns because she can no longer remember having seen them, adding, "But that's all right." I don't think she really means that her condition is "all right" so much as that she's accepted it, or become resigned to it. I don't know how I feel about that. Sometimes I think she should be bitter and indignant. Then I wonder what good that would do—might it only make her unhappier? January 22, 2000 Sara got in by air last night from Minneapolis, where she's been consulting with other workers at her new company, Parametric—gathering information for a software project the Toronto office will be undertaking. Linda was very preoccupied about having dinner ready for her on time. She was so rattled when she couldn't find the frozen vegetables she'd expected to find in the fridge freezer that she poured half a package of frozen corn into the pot in which she had giblets boiling for the gravy rather than into the pot of water she'd prepared on the adjacent ring. We all shrugged it off as a minor incident, and she did too. I suppose that was the right thing to do. Tonight she was very tense while coolking and shouted at me several times to be sure to get the table set and the wine glasses washed in time. Just as I was about to open and decant the wine, Seizer 170

threw up his dinner on a large dog bed beside the dining room table and in the doorway to the kitchen. A Great Dane that vomits his dinner can create quite a pile. He'd evidently drunk too much water and wolfed his food down too quickly. I rushed to begin cleaning up the bed and the surrounding hardwood. In the kitchen I had difficulty getting Linda to move aside so I could reach the paper towels. Sara came in while I was stripping the cover from the bed, so I had her open the wine—a 1988 Chateau La Gurgue I knew Linda would like—while I put the dog-bed cover into the washer. When I came back to the dining room Linda had dinner on the table and was angry that I hadn't decanted the La Gurgue. She said, "I told you that you wouldn't allow enough time." I was feeling rushed and testy too, and I told her to fuck off, that I couldn't have planned for the dog to throw up. I think she'd probably forgotten about that. Anyway, I immediately felt guilty, she was immediately quiet, and we had a pleasantenough meal. Linda got us some ice cream for dessert. While we were eating it she said she thought the chemo was having a lot of side effects. She couldn't sleep naturally anymore and was feeling irritable most of the time. She also didn't think the chemo was working, or if it was working it was doing strange things, that she felt strange. Mike asked her how she felt strange, and she said she felt disoriented much of the time and was having trouble forming sentences, even if we might not think so. None of us knew what to say, and so we said very little. She said she thought she'd go and lie down. When she said she didn't think the chemo was working I thought of the twenty-seven-percent "success" rate of the temozolomide and its implicit seventy-three-percent failure rate. I was glad she didn't know that, yet I also wondered if she should know. It seems unethical for us to have allowed her to be hopeful about the new medication and to now be so angrily disappointed. Yet having hope is supposed to increase the odds of remission or cure. I don't know. I suspect she does understand that all of these drugs are hit-and-mostly-miss propositions, but it's still distressing 171

to see her struggling to comprehend what's happening to her and to know that we have more relevant information than she does. Or think that we do. For of course we don't know whether the drug is woridng. Whether we should be encouraging her or merely supporting her. Her symptoms aren't good, but they're not the same as when the first tumor disrupted her speech and memory. After she goes upstairs I comment to Mike that she may have better information about her symptoms than we do—after all, she's experiencing them firsthand rather than only observing them from without. Mike too thinks her symptoms are ambiguous, although he wonders if the new tumor, instead of making her somnolent, as the first one did, has disrupted her ability to regulate her sleep. He says that if it is growing, undeterred by the temozolomide, that it may be doing so in a different direction from where the oligodendroglioma grew. I reply that it would be useful to know what functions could be affected by the new tumor if it grew in a different direction. He doesn't comment. Sara says she doesn't see much change in her from two weeks ago—which would be a good sign. But Mike says that he noticed her having language difficulties when he took her to the supermarket Wednesday; he thought these might have arisen because the store was a more challenging environment than home. None of us has much more to say. I don't push the discussion because I figure Mike and Sara must be feeling at least as lousy as I am. January 23, 2000 Discovered again today some of the depth of my own detestation of Scott. At a dog show in nearby Woodstock he showed his bitch Honey, and for the first time this year she defeated our Seizer, possibly because Seizer's handler, Judy, had already won Winners Bitch for another Dane client—judges are often reluctant to give one handler more than one major award in a breed, even when another of their dogs is visibly the best. When the judge was giving out the ribbons my right arm began shaking with rage. It seemed so unjust that a man who contributed to the early deaths of our first Danes and who has been so lax about monitoring 172

the health of the dogs he has sold should, yet again, be prospering. To me, he doesn't deserve a decent or winning dog. And while he's likely to have won number two Canadian Dane for 1999 with her simply because he showed her at every mom-and-pop show in Ontario, Linda's beloved Soren is dead and she's slowly dying. I know there's no god up there distributing equitable fates, but it all still seems fucking unjust. At least I seem to have blocked him from winning number one—the latest standings came out today. I wonder if my right arm would have been shaking so if Linda'd been well. I don't like how enraged and bitter I feel. And Scott's friends were once again stupidly clapping and cheering, as they usually do if Honey wins—as if the win were a colossal upset and the first significant prize the poor bitch had ever won. The judge must have wondered what unlikely thing he'd done. Maybe they'll clap and cheer when Linda dies. Back home Linda is lethargic and only mildly interested in the show. She's working on another angel food cake and asks me to remind her to remove it from the oven in fifteen minutes. I set an alarm clock for myself to make sure I do. January 27, 2000 Spent much of this morning editing and typesetting the next issue of Open Letter. The issue is based on a very large conference called "Women and Texts" held at the University of Leeds in 1996. A conference that Lynette co-organized. There are several other journals publishing papers from this conference. The papers I obtained for the issue—sight unseen—are all on women's health. Most of them are plaintively autobiographical—laments about being beaten by fathers and husbands, about having employers who are insensitive to chronic illnesses, about being mysteriously driven to bulemia. Lots of sad testimony and little analysis of the cultural constructions of illness to which such testimony unwittingly contributes. Very little about textuality or about being a writer. I am exaggerating, I guess, but I do find several of the essays and poems amateurish and boring. They remind me too much of the kind that get 173

nominated for national prizes. The writers' credentials seldom seem to be that they write well or interestingly, only that they suffer. Maybe I'm just tired and grumpy. Linda, who has no patience for anyone, including myself, who indulges their limitations or blames them on others, would wonder why I was publishing them. I think about the contrast between her secrecy about her illness, her implicit refusal of pity, and these women's public proclamations of their abjection. I wonder what that means. I think of her mother on the phone last month, begging her to be impressed by her "massive" heart attack. There was CBC documentary last night on the crisis in cancer treatment, the shortage of treatment facilities, doctors, technicians, and nurses, the long and dangerous waits some patients are having for radiation treatment, and on the experiences of Ontario patients who have been sent to Cleveland for a month or more of treatment. Linda has; been affected by this crisis, although we were naively unaware of it at the time. Six weeks elapsed between her diagnosis and the beginning of radiation. We thought her doctors were using this time to analyze her symptoms and decide whether she should be entered in the radiation-plus-chemotherapy trial until Dr. Fisher casually let slip that her treatment should have begun sooner. The doctors in the documentary say that four weeks is the most anyone should have to wait and that now many are waiting more than twelve, unless they are willing to leave home for treatment elsewhere. I find myself angry all over again at the Delaware pathologist who took his bloody sweet time deciding whether Linda could be part of the trial. Most of the Ontario patients in Cleveland are stoic about being ill and enduring debilitating treatment while so far away from family and friends. A black man with prostate cancer sensibly finds and attends a church similar to his own. A tall woman with breast cancer comments matter-offactly that she had no choice but to travel to Cleveland if she wished to go on living. But an older woman whines about her loneliness and how unfair her situation is. I wonder why the camera keeps coming back to her. "Why is this happening to me?" she asks for the fifth or sixth time. I joke to 174

Mike that it's because God hates her, hates her whining. The excess, the spilling over of her whining, suggests the spilling over of her body into lumps and pustules, malignancy. Maybe I prefer stoics because they politely contain their troubles and illnesses. They don't let them spill out onto me. Maybe that's one of the reasons I've loved Linda. It's ironic that the more people whine about their plight the less people will listen to them—or the less people like me or Linda will listen to them. And the less they are listened to the more they drone on. The nonlistener's contempt becomes a coproducer of the whine. That was one of the ways in which Linda and her mother related during her childhood—her mother languishing, collapsing, saying, "Please love me, please look after me," and Linda feeding into the dynamic by saying, as she did one day, "You don't want to know if I love you," and then at fourteen taking herself and her paycheck from the house. One of the papers in the issue I'm working on has been presented by its writer, I'm told, at various conferences, under different and somewhat deceptive titles, over the past decade. I wouldn't know—I usually avoid conference sessions where a paper like this might be given. But I wonder if I really am bored by the issue I'm typesetting or just made uncomfortable by it. Maybe I don't want to hear about people's illnesses, even if they don't whine, or maybe I and others help create the whining tone and the repetitions by being reluctant to listen or read. Linda may be right that it is demeaning to be ill, or to be public about one's illness, that one's social standing declines as one's illness increases. But she—and I—are paying a price in solitude and silence. January 29, 2000 Sara rented a car and drove down to visit unexpectedly last night. She's just left. As usual, when she leaves I feel depressed. I'm not sure what the depression means, except perhaps that I'm finding the house suddenly more silent and that there is one less person to talk to. Or is it that it no longer contains a functioning, sympathetic woman? I suspect something of the latter. Or maybe I just miss Sara. 175

Her work schedule has been rearranged, so she won't be able to visit next weekend, and she was worried that her mother might have changed considerably by two weeks from now. I think that her seeing her mother only every week or two weeks gives her a different sense of her illness than Mike and I have. Even yesterday, when she arrived, she thought Linda was more tired, less animated, less articulate than she was a week ago. I hadn't felt that, at least not with any conviction. I have so much trouble remembering Linda of a day ago, or days ago. I think I also may not want to see any falling away. The one thing I do notice is that she continues to be cold. She was in her overheated study this morning when I got up, playing a computer game. Still in my pyjamas, I went to say good morning. The room was so warm that I was uncomfortable, but she was shivering despite having wrapped herself in a heavy chenille housecoat. Mike continues to tliink her shivering might be a sign of depression, but I can't see any other signs that she's depressed. Sara wonders if her brain, as well as being unable to regulate her sleep, is now increasingly unable to regulate her temperature. It's a possibility—I'll try to remember to ask Dr. Macdonald at her next appointment. The question that I'm still trying not to think about is how much time does she have left. Is the temozolomide a sign of final clays? I think Sara believes it may be. I know Mike believes it's currently a drug of last resort. Later this morning Linda laboriously made a beef bourguignon so Sara could eat an early dinner before she left. Every few minutes she would call one of us to find something for her or to lift a heavy pot from the cupboard. But the result, as usual, was delicious. While we were eating she began shivering again, although the thermostat in the dining room was reading seventy-one. She commented that she wished it were summer and we were sitting out in the yard again, sipping white wine. She said she hoped she lived that long and that we could clean up the patio, get a new patio umbrella and a padded chair for her. I should buy more white wine. How many months away was summer, she wondered. Sara and I counted forward to the middle of May—about three and a half months. Yes, she thought she could last that long. 176

Now it's four o'clock and I'm having trouble figuring out what I want to do for the rest of the day. I have numerous things to do—an article to proofread, e-mail to answer about Open Letter issues, an essay to write for a mid-February deadline, Open Letter orders to fill—but I probably won't do any of these. Well maybe. I continue to feel that I'm waiting for something but I don't want to think about what it is. January 30, 2000 One of the first things Linda ever did for me was cook me a meal— beefsteak, salad, and red wine—a Bouchard Aine Beaujolais Superieur. It was just days after we'd become lovers, and we were talking about her going with me to Montreal, where I was to be writer-in-residence at Sir George Williams University. We were at the shabby little house I'd rented in the postmarried quarters at Royal Roads after my marriage had broken up. She'd made the meal seem like an important ceremony. Yet it was also clear that she still loved Roger, who several months ago had begun telling people he was leaving her. He'd decided to go to Cambridge to work on a PhD. Linda would be better off left behind in Canada, he said, where she could work and he wouldn't have to support her. But he hadn't told her. It was me who eventually told her, late that February. She was angry at me for a couple of months. By late May he'd arranged to rent their house, and he'd begun selling off some of their furniture. Tonight she would sleep with me and then go back and spend the night with Roger. Last night she had placated Roger by having sex with him and then came and spent the night with me. She said he was becoming solemnly maudlin. When she was home he would pick up his guitar and sing the Jose Feliciano song "The Last Thing on My Mind"—"Are you going away with no word of farewell, will there be not a trace left behind?" "Why is he telling me this now?" she would exclaim to me exasperatedly. A week later, the night before she and I had decided to leave together for Montreal, was the annual Royal Roads farewell barbecue, an event occasioned by the annual reassignment of many of the college's military 177

staff. Linda insisted that we go. It was to be another ceremony. She had mischievously arranged for us to share a table of four with Roger and Helen. Roger had always presented himself as rational and unemotional about his relationships. Linda made sure we had lots of Haut-Medoc and was herself giddy and charming and flirtatious most of the evening. As Roger got increasingly drunk and sentimental, Linda became correspondingly self-controlled and correct. I'm not sure Helen knew what was going on. We all graciously said goodbye, except for Roger, who stammered and turned away. Six hours later Linda and I were on the road to Montreal in my red TR-4. We got to Kamloops, where we rented a motel room and made love and discovered we'd made the sheets bloody because she was starting her period. Two months later we'd forgotten Roger's song and were sitting most days in a Crescent Street bistro listening to Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay." She said it was our song. February i, 2000 Woke up today having dreamed something about playing the piano, which I once did decades ago. We have a Sohmer baby grand, which I bought and had rebuilt in the late 19803, but Linda hasn't liked me to play it in the last few years. Maybe it reminds her of Roger's guitar. In the dream I'm sitting at this piano, and there's a woman standing behind me to the right. I don't think it's Linda—it's more likely Sara or someone her age. Of course Linda was once Sara's age. I have some music that the woman may have given me; most of its notes are bass. But when I attempt to play it no sound comes from the piano. When I awake I have a pretty good idea what the dream was about. Most of my friends would laugh at me if I didn't. February 2, 2000 Didn't sleep much last night. Just before going to bed, at around i A.M., I stopped at Linda's computer, which is wired directly to the Internet through the local cable-TV system, to check the eBay auctions for a larger 178

hard drive for it. She wandered by and said that she'd been having trouble tonight reading her e-mail, that she couldn't comprehend the words, line by line, that she was reading. The problem has slowly been getting worse over the past three days. We both understand, without saying so, that this is really bad news, a sign that her new tumor is growing, that it's getting back to the potentially lethal size that the first tumor had got to last spring. She was smiling weakly as she told me this, possibly with embarrassment, most likely with unhappiness. What can you say when you're looking in the eyes of someone who knows she's probably dying. I wanted to tell her what I thought might be a lie, but I knew she wouldn't believe me. Instead I said it was a good thing we were scheduled to see her doctor on Monday. "Is it?" she said. "He may be able to change your medication, or take another MRI," I offered. "Sure," she said, shrugging and looking down as she lowered herself to her bed. Afterward I lay in bed in panic for hours. Where would I live with her gone? How does one arrange a cremation? I saw myself alone at our dinner table, drinking one of the hundreds of bottles of wine we'd planned to drink together. What would I do with all her legal papers? I should ask her about them. What would I say to her mother and sister? Should I call them as soon as she's so ill that she's comatose? Should I wait? I imagined myself on the phone. Imagined myself meeting some of the numerous friends who didn't know Linda was seriously ill and telling them about her. Bizarrely, it was uncomfortably pleasant to think of finally doing these things. I tried to think of something else. Of making love to her at a campsite near Nanaimo in a hurriedly pitched tent at two in the afternoon before we were married. How I loved the slightly elegant lilt in her voice on the telephone and still do. Should I send a note to Sara about her mom's new symptoms? How isolated I would feel without her the next time I traveled in France? How quiet the house would be. All these thoughts about me, not her. I'll need a lawyer. I'll ask him or her all sorts of things I once would have asked Linda. She was once so strong. In April of 1986 we made the first of many 179

trips to Paris. Linda'd earnestly studied French in Toronto at the Alliance for the previous six months. We'd been walking along the Seine near Notre Dame, and we paused in the little square across from the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. There was a group of dark-haired young girls playing in the square. Three or four of them ran up to us holding what might have been large theater posters and shouted at us in a language that didn't seem to be French. They seemed to be ten or twelve years old. They began pressing the posters against me from all sides, and they appeared angry that we weren't answering them. I thought maybe they were selling something, or perhaps begging. Then I realized that under cover of the posters they had their hands in my pockets and in the front pocket of my camera bag, where I had a large wallet that contained my passport and credit cards. It occurred to me that I could easily punch and seriously injure any one of them, perhaps several of them, but I couldn't bring myself to hit them. One of them got hold of my wallet and passport. Linda had realized before me what was happening. She struck the girl's arm with a vicious karate chop, sending my wallet to the ground and the girl reeling off clutching her arm. She then stood on the wallet and began shouting "Au voleur!" as loudly as she could, striking out at one of the other girls. The girls ran off, dropping their posters as they ran. A middleaged Frenchman in a business suit ran up and asked if we were okay. He said the girls were gypsies from Yugoslavia and that there were a lot of them in the city. Later that day, on the Rue de Rivoli, we saw a similar group of young boys begin to surround an American couple with posters. "Au voleur!" shouted Linda and ran towards them, with me close behind. The boys ran off across the street through heavy traffic and vaulted the seventeen-foot iron fence into the Tuileries. In the next few day we saw several more clusters of dark-eyed, unkempt children carrying large posters. They would move away as soon as we stared at them. We read in one of the French papers that the gangs belonged to a group of around a hundred gypsy families that had camped in beat-up trailers in the Bois de Boulogne and had been involved in more than a thousand assaults and 180

robberies in the past month. The police were trying to find a way of deporting them. They'll run away if you name them, Linda kept telling me. After teaching my morning class today I went back to her computer and successfully bid on a near-new 4.3 gigabyte drive. Although eBay is a worldwide auction, the seller lives here in London and I'll be able to get it quickly. It's not as big a drive as I'd like, and I try not to think of the possibility, the excuse, that she may not need it for long. I want her to need it. Neither of us have said anything about our earlier conversation. She has a craving for tacos, and she sends me out to buy tortillas and packages of taco mix. She keeps apologizing for her cravings. I want to tell her I'm glad she has cravings. February 8, 2000 Mike didn't go with us to Linda's appointment with Dr. Macdonald at the Cancer Center today. I let her off at the door and parked our van in the parking lot. When I caught up with her she was sitting in the hematology waiting room. She hadn't picked up the blood-test requisition from the nursing station and didn't think she needed to, so I took her health card from her purse and went to the station myself. She was annoyed and confused by my intervention—and by my rummaging in her purse! Her confusion was somewhat understandable—on days when she has a blood test without also seeing the doctor, the requisition is waiting for her in hematology; on days like today, when she sees Dr. Macdonald, she has to pick it up at the nursing station and alert the station that she is here for her appointment. After the lab workers took her blood sample we had a surprisingly short wait at the nursing station. A different nurse from usual—not Rose—came for her and interviewed her about her symptoms over the past month. Linda was quite incoherent, several times beginning sentences and then saying that she couldn't finish them, or that she'd forgotten what she was going to say. I wondered if she had forgotten, or was just unable to articulate what she was remembering. It was hard to tell. It was also 181

hard to figure out from the sentence fragments that she managed to utter what subject she was trying to raise. I restrained myself from intervening, hoping that the nurse would at least notice her difficulties, but I'm not sure she did. Rose would have, but this nurse didn't have a context for interpreting Linda's ability. Linda didn't mention her recent reading problems, or chronically feeling cold, so as the nurse was getting up to go I reminded Linda of both. Linda sort of shrugged both matters off but in different ways. She said she had always been cold in the wintertime, that we had a drafty house. But she told the nurse that her language skills had been declining overall in the last few weeks, that she felt she was going downhill, and that her difficulties reading from the computer screen were just a part of that. The nurse smiled, jotted a few things down, and went to get Dr. Macdonald, leaving the door ajar. He surprised us by arriving only five minutes later, while Linda was standing looking at the magazine rack on the back of the door. He couldn't see her. I called to her so that he wouldn't bang the door into her. Astonishingly, she was quite coherent in answering his questions. He'd read the nurse's notes and asked Linda about her reading problems. She answered that she thought it was a problem of comprehension rather than of vision—that she could see the words but couldn't recognize them as sentences. He checked her vision and seemed to find blind spots on the right periphery, although he made no comment about it. He gave her an eye chart to read, and we both noticed that when she came to a sentence she had to move her head every few words in order to focus her eyes. She commented that one of her problems might be that she is not seeing words and is only perceiving fragments of sentences. I tiled once more to remind her of her recent speech problems and her chronic feeling of being cold, but she angrily cut me off: "Don't listen to him—he's lying, he's inventing again." Dr. Macdonald looked puzzled and then pointed to his watch and asked her what is was. "Watch," she said. He pointed to his pen. "Pen," she said. After checking her reflexes the doctor told us that her blood tests had 182

been very good and that he was giving her a second course of temozolomide —that her first treatment had been at seventy-percent strength because she had recently undergone other chemotherapies, but that this treatment would be one hundred percent of the recommended dosage. As he was leaving to calculate and write up the prescription, I asked him how many successive courses of the drug were usual. He said up to twelve, as long it was continuing to "control the tumor," and then he added that he'd read of patients having up to twenty-four courses. I wondered to myself about the circumstances in which these twenty-four courses, or even twelve, came to an end. But instead I asked him how he would be monitoring whether the temozolomide was controlling the tumor. I was thinking of the symptoms she'd recently been displaying. He said he'd already requested an MRI for her in the middle of March and that she'd probably have received her third course of temozolomide by that point. "Unless?" I asked. "Unless she has symptoms that suggest it's doing no good," he said. He's a nice man, somewhat shy, who must see a lot of people struggle against cancer for a while and die. I don't think he wants us to think too much about the possibility that the treatment is not working. On the way home Linda lit a cigarette. After a few blocks, she asked, "Are you going to do ... ?" "Am I going to do what?" I said. "Are you going to do that thing. . . ?" she tried again. I tried to think of all the things she might have expected me to do today. "I got the steaks out for dinner," I attempted. "No—I mean, are you going to do the thing you do ... ?" Her voice petered out again in puzzlement. I glanced down and noticed that the dashboard ashtray, which was difficult for her to reach, was closed. She wanted me to open it. I reached down and pulled it open. "That's it," she said. Before dinner I describe this incident to Mike and comment that she had begun the sentence with utterly inappropriate syntax, which then trapped her into a question she did not want to ask. The more she spoke the more the gap opened between what the sentence compelled her to say and what she wanted to say. 183

After dinner we all sit together, discussing our dogs. Linda suddenly asks whether Seizer has had any allergic reaction to that stuff we gave him. I try to remember what medication we've given him recently, but I can't think of anything except antihistamines, some antibiotics that his vet prescribed for him before Christmas, and the taurine supplements I've been giving both dogs. Each time I suggest that she may be asking about one of these, she looks more puzzled and tries again to ask about "that stuff." She says she can say and hear the words in her mind and see the "stuff," but she can't say the words aloud. She says this with patient selfamusement several times. Then I remember that she and I bathed Seizer yesterday, using Murphy's Oil soap. She's asking if he had a reaction to that soap! "To the Murphy's Oil soap?" I ask. "Yes," she says, and then tries to say it. "Say it again," she asks. I say the words, and she tries again to say them, unsuccessfully. "It's weird," she says. "I can't say those words." I look across at Mike, who's looking stunned and tense. He says later that he nearly threw up his dinner. I change the subject back to the Barossa Valley Cabernet we're drinking. She doesn't seem to mind. I'm glad she's not as frightened by what just happened as I am. Mike and I had talked several times back in the spring about how we form language by using two or more parts of the brain in consort and how a tumor can interrupt communication between these parts. What had just happened to Linda was frightening, but it was also a stunning demonstration of such a disruption, with Linda being aware of the words she was sending out for another part of her self to speak and being stymied by their nonarrival. Strangely, she also was fascinated by what was happening, while also frustrated and discouraged. As I write this, I am amazed at the words arriving at my fingertips and then on the screen before me. February 9, 2000 There's a front-page article in the Globe today about one of Linda's friends from her lawyering days in Toronto. It's Colin Woolf, a retired 184

respirologist and former associate dean of medicine at the University of Toronto. He's had terminal cancer for the past year, and he's tired of dying. "I've not seen many people die as slowly as I am dying." He wishes he had the energy to campaign for legal euthanasia. The article quotes him: "You've got to eat, you've got to sleep, you've got to pee—and you keep on saying 'Why?' And you have a lot of people around saying, 'Well, we're going to miss you.' There's a total loss of independence, a total loss of dignity. Psychologically, there is a complete loss of future. If there's no future, nothing can be particularly meaningful to you." All the subjects— futures, independence, sympathy—that have been taboo for Mike and me around Linda, although I think that, oddly, Linda sees herself as having more independence than Woolf does, as she continues to insist on cooking and being consulted about her treatment. Independence seems to be a psychological state, and it has as much to do with how you view yourself as it does with your actual situation. And she also at least pretends to have a future, still anticipating, for example, when the 1996 Grand Cru Bordeaux will be mature enough to drink. Of course she also has less ability to reflect on her situation, and perhaps, mercifully, she forgets she has a short future. Woolf has independence that Linda doesn't have—the independence to assert his view cogently for a national newspaper. I wonder whether I should show the article to her. Would it discourage or help her? I have no idea. February 10, 2000 Linda believes that she's going downhill quickly—or so Mike says she told him earlier today. She was talking about her frustration at not being able to read e-mail messages. She's also been having dramatic vision difficulties. A few days ago she was making a Belgian beer stew. I had left two cans of beer side-by-side in the front of the fridge, but she was able to find only one, so she went to the other fridge in the back kitchen to get a second can. The next day I left three artichokes beside the stove for her to cook, and at dinnertime she called me to help her find them. She'd got a 185

steamer out to cook the artichokes in, and she'd put it on the counter on top of them. Yesterday she lit a cigarette after dinner and asked Mike and me for her ashtray. It was in its usual place—to the right of her wine glass, behind her cigarettes. Today she asked me to get the Dremel grinder ready so she could trim Seizer's and Stevie's nails. She came downstairs, stood in the dining room about fourteen feet from where Stevie and I were in the TV room, looked straight at us, and called my name loudly. I was so astonished I didn't answer. She called again, and I replied quietly that we were right here. She said, "Why didn't you say something? You know I can't see properly." Actually I didn't, or maybe I did but haven't yet accepted that I do. I had trouble with the verb tenses of the last sentence. I'm going away tomorrow morning for a four-day dog show in Toronto, the only February show in Ontario or Quebec. It's going; to be a relief to be away from the uneasiness and ambiguities. Seizer and I will be staying in Sara's apartment, and Sara will be coming here. I'm glad Sara's going to be able to see Linda and get some sense of what is happening. But I'm also wondering if I should call Dr. Macdonald tomorrow, or maybe Monday. He did say to call if Linda's condition changed. I wonder how sincere he was—it's hard for me not to think that he knows the tumor is getting worse. I wish he'd been more candid. Is there something else he could do? I'd better talk to Mike about it later tonight. Meanwhile Seizer is becoming even more difficult about food. For the last three days, every time I get his food ready he runs into his crate. I have to take him to the back kitchen and feed him by hand, one handful at a time. Mike says that he's a sensitive dog, that he may be; picking up our anxiety about Linda, or even picking up her fear. He is cautious, skittish, and, arguably, "sensitive." I don't know. I just know it's a nuisance to have to feed him this way and to worry about him losing weight just before a big show. His handler at this show, Harold Butler, likes big dogs and wants him even heavier than usual, not lighter. But I'm nice to Seizer anyway. I joke with him as I feed him, and he sits and wags his tail wildly.

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February 12, 2000 I did call Dr. Macdonald yesterday. Mike and I had a long talk Thursday night, before I left for Toronto. He wanted someone to call Dr. Macdonald about Linda's rapidly changing condition, but he didn't want to do it himself, didn't want to raise the matter with me, and was glad I had raised it. It's so hard for me, or him, to get a perspective on Linda, and we were both relieved to find we thought we were seeing the same things. I phoned Linda first and told her how Seizer had done at the show— that he'd won Breed and come close to a Group placement. I asked her how she was, and she said "logy"—her word for feeling tired and drugged. I didn't ask her if I should call Dr. Macdonald because I knew she'd say no. It's almost a matter of pride with her to minimize her symptoms and put on a brave show. Never did speak to Dr. Macdonald directly, however. Called his nurse's number, reached a nursing desk at the Cancer Center, and gave the nurse there Linda's case number, a summary of her changing symptoms, and Sara's Toronto telephone number, which I had to look up. Dr. Macdonald's nurse, Rose, called me back within half an hour and said she was surprised, that the notes from Linda's appointment last Monday indicated that she was doing well. She asked me to repeat what I'd told the nurse at the nursing desk, and I told her about Linda's vision problems, her "lost" ashtray, and her increasing difficulties in reading and speaking. She also wanted to know about Linda's current decadron dosage—which was of course the half-milligram twice daily that Dr. Macdonald had set in August. I guess some patients or families change dosages without telling the center. I reminded her about the ongoing five-day temozolomide therapy and about Linda not feeling drowsy during the first such treatment. She called back half an hour later to tell me that Dr. Macdonald recommended doubling Linda's decadron dosage. I called Mike immediately to begin the doubling with her evening pills. He seemed to think it was a good move, although I didn't understand why. Today when I called to tell Linda that Seizer had won Breed and a 187

Group third she seemed peeved, as I had expected she would, that I had called her doctor. She doesn't like what steroids such as decadron do to her personality. They make her cranky and insensitive, she thinks. But she agreed that her symptoms have been getting worse, that she can now read virtually nothing on the computer screen. Tonight I called Mike to ask how he thought she was doing. He explained that an infiltrative tumor causes inflamation and tissue swelling not through direct pressure but through the damage it causes to adjoining tissue, and he said that the decadron could help relieve this. He added that many people become "adjusted" to low dosages of drugs like decadron because their bodies reduce their own production of cortical steroids to compensate for the pills. Doubling the decadron might, in effect, only be taking it back to the level that half a milligram had achieved previously. He laughed that Linda was blaming me for phoning Dr. Macdonald—he had told her that I had made the call, but he'd also indicated that I'd done it mainly because of his urging. A few minutes after I'd talked to Mike, Linda called me. She was cheerful and quite articulate and wanted to know that I was okay. February 13, 2000 Talked to Sara today, who is worried that her mom will deteriorate badly while she's in Mexico. Sara is spending this Tuesday and Wednesday in Boston on business, and on Friday she leaves with her boyfriend, James, for ten days in Cancun. She's not sure her mom knows where she's going—she may only know that Sara won't be coming to visit for a couple of weeks. Linda said to Sara today that she hoped she'd still be able to speak the next time she saw her. Sara said her mother's speech was very bad today. She couldn't remember the word for wine this afternoon, and earlier in the day she called the computer a VCR and the microwave a VCR, just as she'd done at her worst last May. Her attempts at sentences were dissolving into fragments like "y'know," "that stuff," "that thing." She also told Sara today that she thought she had at best four months 188

to live. I stupidly said to Sara that I thought she was being optimistic, that at the rate her language skills were declining she might have only six weeks. Sara then panicked and began wondering if she should cancel her Mexico trip, and I had to backtrack and reassure her that her mother probably wouldn't be all that different when she got back. I'm not sure I believe that, however. I don't know what I should be saying. Sara would be devastated if her mother died while she was away and extremely sad if she were indeed incapable of speech when she returned. How likely are these possibilities? Not very, I think—but not out of the question. February 14, 2000 I spoke to Sara late last night. She thought Linda might have been annoyed about my having called Dr. Macdonald because Mike and I hadn't consulted with her. But when I get home Linda doesn't seem annoyed at all. We joke about it being Valentine's Day. She's cooking roast beef for me, and I bring up a 1993 Pavilion Rouge de Chateau Margaux. It's a little tannic, but she quips that she couldn't let it age much longer. Mike reassures me that he did tell her that we were going to call Dr. Macdonald —the unwelcome surprise to her was that the doctor increased her decadron. She was hoping that he would change her treatment. February 15, 2000 Mike's started work repairing the front parlor and dining room ceilings, which have both been damaged by water—one from Linda's airconditioner, the other from spills she made last year while filling her aquarium. These and the laundry room ceiling will all have to be repaired before we can sell the house. Although we don't talk about selling the house. February 17, 2000 City crews arrived at half past seven this morning and began cutting down our huge storm-damaged maple tree. I heard their truck arrive and 189

managed to get Seizer up and outside to pee before they started their chain saws and pieces of tree began falling into our dogyard. I got Stevie outside too, but he was too frightened by the sound of the truck engines to go further than the porch, and he ran back in and hid under the dining room table. When the crews began cutting, Seizer stood at the nearest window barking, and Stevie began running in anxious circles. Seeing his anxiety, Seizer began jumping on him, enjoying the opportunity to dominate. I had to put Seizer back in his crate. I eventually managed to calm Stevie and, when the crews took a coffee break, I got him to go outside and have a minute-long pee. Linda slept through it all, and now, at 10:30, she's watching TV. She hasn't gone down to get herself a coffee. She didn't yesterday either, the first time I can ever remember her not wanting a morning coffee. I could go and get her one, but she says no. I think her language skills are slightly worse. She speaks less, and in simpler sentences, many of which she never manages to finish. We have almost no conversations that aren't about factual matters—grocery items, dinner preparations, whether she has taken her decadron pills. I could tell her that the city crews are working on our tree, but I don't because she wouldn't remember that the tree had been damaged, and she'd have to struggle to find words with which to ask what I was talking about. Instead of informing and interesting her, I would likely only frustrate and annoy her. I've decided not to register for the Learned Societies congress in Edmonton the last week of May, or to book a flight there, although in the fall I did submit a proposal to present a paper. I have no idea how Linda will be at that point, or whether I will feel like going. Right now I don't want to go. It's 11:30. I've just tried to give Linda her pills, but she's asleep with the TV remote in her hand. Mike says he heard her in the garage, probably getting ice cream, around 4 A.M.

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February 18, 2000 Wrote to George today. In his last note he said he'd been to a big poetry-reading party. Tried to write him a smartass letter but couldn't do it. Yeah I remember getting together & reading poems to each other. Seems like a hundert years ago. I don't write much these days except entries in a journal. There is so much I want to remember, or work out so I might remember. Linda goes a little micro bit down every day, but not globally, or lobally... It's still mainly her eyesight and language that are going. She can now see very little to right of center (at least her tumor has some political grace). & it requires all her energy & focus to do simple tasks, which thank god she still wants to do. Takes a lot of satisfaction in still cooking meals, & making elaborate dog treats. I get tired of all this continuing, & then feel so guilty because there is only one way it will end. I got away last weekend to TO for 3 days & came back able to be much more patient. But it's getting even more difficult to plan aheadhave decided not to go to the Learneds in Edmonton last week of May—wd be having to pay for a residence room now, and booking a flight. Would have liked to have been with old friends there though.

February 19, 2000 Had a dream early this morning in which I was with Linda at some sort of outdoor gathering, perhaps by a riverbank, and she was introducing me to twenty or more attractive women, some in their twenties, some considerably older. They were women who could be in my future, she indicated, but she was not going to be. It was sunny. Linda was to my right, but she kept slipping out of my view. I'd written to George yesterday about feeling tired, and now I think that Linda's even more tired. But in sleep my mind keeps going. Haven't heard anything yet from Sara and James in Mexico, but at least there have been no plane crashes reported on the news. She may be having difficult finding a phone she can call from. Mike was grouchy this morning. When he asked me at breakfast to buy more ceiling paint and I said I was going to wait until I saw how well the two-thirds of a gallon we have on hand covers, he began muttering 191

under his breath. I left the room, and Linda abruptly reprimanded him, asking him if he was trying to say something and telling him that her hearing was becoming very bad and that she felt very uncomfortable not knowing for sure whether she was being spoken to. I don't think she realized that his muttering was a response to his conversation, with me. When she was finished he said in a loud voice, "I will say one: thing clearly— goodbye" and stalked off upstairs to his room, still talking to himself. Linda was very unhappy with herself yesterday. She was baking two expensive racks of lamb for dinner and forgot to turn the oven from preheat to bake, so she slightly scorched the bread, garlic, and parsley coating she'd put on them. The lamb was still delicious, but she kept saying, "I've never done that before." Earlier, our friend Bessie Borwein, a retired research biochemist at the university, phoned on my telephone line and asked after Linda but not to speak to her. Linda had met Bessie through her various emigre South African Jewish clients during her law career, and she had later joined her and others in founding Partners in Research. Bessie said she was calling about the annual Partners banquet—about whether we'd be buying tickets. I said that Linda was "not too bad," and she replied with some humor that I didn't sound entirely convinced. I wondered if she had already tried to call Linda directly, or if she'd had some worrying reports of her, but I didn't ask. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to say to her, although Bessie is absolutely trustworthy. I knew that Partners was still sending Linda numerous faxes regarding board of directors meetings and other matters—Linda is still a director—and that Linda had not sent any reply. The Partners banquet is to be held on April 2.1 said I wasn't sure we'd be able to go—that I might be at a dog show. I recalled Linda's difficulties in delivering her speech at last year's banquet. Will she want to try to go this year? Will she be able to? Now I'm also wondering if I should phone Bessie back and let her know what's been happening to Linda. I know that if I ask Linda whether I should she'll say no. Maybe I can wait another couple of weeks before deciding. 192

I see tonight that I'm running out of usable video tapes. For months Linda's viewing has been keeping slightly ahead of my taping, but in the last few days the gap has narrowed. I bought an extra tape yesterday when I bought groceries. At the moment I have a stack of twelve tapes that she hasn't watched as well as two that are being recorded in my VCRs, and she must have one in her own VCR and three or four more in her room. In the morning, if she hasn't left me two tapes to rerecord, I'll have to go out and buy more. February 20, 2000 I've noticed a message on Linda's e-mail from Vicky Lanyon, Stevie's breeder, about pictures Linda had promised to take of him for a breeder in Montreal who is thinking of breeding one of her bitches with him. It reads as if the Montreal breeder may have asked Linda several times. I decide I'd better look after this, and I get Mike to help—he'll take the pictures while I pose Stevie. Linda's always hated the fuss of focusing a single-lens-reflex camera and has insisted on disposable ones. She has one from last year, half exposed, which she's left on the mantle near the backdoor. Mike and I use the rest of the shots on Stevie and get them developed at the grocery store. They're all underexposed. Mike grumbles about the lack of focusing adjustment on disposable cameras. I tell him I'm unlikely ever to buy another one and dig one of our big Mamiyas out of my closet and buy batteries and film for it. We take twenty-four more pictures and get three good ones. I've just bought a third Mamiya on eBay and a fourth one for spare parts. I wonder what I've been thinking of. I scan the three good photos and e-mail them to Vicky and the Montreal breeder. Vicky is so pleased that she sends me three e-mails praising Stevie and forecasting wonderful dog-show wins for him if he ever matures and puts on weight. But she kindly doesn't ask why it's me who's sent the pictures, or why I've answered nearly all of her e-mail to Linda in the past month.

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February 22, 2000 Received an e-mail from Sara, which she sent from an Internet cafe in Carmen del Playa. There's no telephone in the condo she and James have borrowed, although it has satellite TV. They've been to Chichen Itza and done some snorkeling. I reply, teasing her for complaining about the heat. Today Linda was walking between her bedroom and her study when she stopped suddenly and raised her left hand to her temple. She said she'd had a sudden sharp headache. She went back and lay down, and when I checked half an hour later she said the headache was gone. At dinner she asked when her next appointment with Dr. Macdonald was—I told her March 6. She sighed and said she'd probably be ga-ga by then. Even though she was unhappy about Mike and me: calling the Cancer Center last week and reporting her increasing symptoms, I think she also feels abandoned by the center. She knows the increased decadron is only a palliative. I've thought of calling the center again, but I don't trust that it would make any difference, or that there would tie anything more that Dr. Macdonald could do. February 24, 2000 Linda sat for quite a while with me after dinner and after Mike had left. "I'm not doing very well," she said. "I hope you know." I nodded. "All my symptoms are getting worse," she said. I joked that Susie sure hadn't recognized any problem when she'd phoned the other night—she'd later sent an e-mail saying that their mom was doing amazingly well and was likely to outlive both of them. Linda smiled and said that as usual Susie had done most of the talking on the phone, that all she'd had to do was grunt approvingly from time to time. I said, "She's going to get a big shock when I call and tell her you're dead—what are we going to do about her and your mom?" She said it would be so much simpler if her mother would only die. Then she could tell Susie. But she thinks she will have to tell Susie soon, or that I will have to. I said to her with a smile, "I'm going to have quite a job telling all your friends who have no idea you are ill that 194

you are dead or near death." She began looking pained. I said, "Hey, I don't mind doing this for you so that you can keep your illness private, I don't mind." And it's true that I don't. I even find the prospect somewhat interesting, in a ghoulish and literary sort of way. I don't tell her that, however. "You're not going to get any of my mom's money, you know," Linda then said, referring to how Jackie's will divides her property between Linda and Susie. I said that I'd have enough—it's Michael and Sara who'd be hard done by, particularly Mike, who at thirty still hasn't had a professional job, let alone set anything aside for retirement. She replied cryptically, "Be nice to him." Then she said it again, "Promise—be nice to him." It was like Fan, in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, on her deathbed beseeching Scrooge to look after her boy. Poor Mike, I thought. His mother doesn't have much faith in his ability to look after himself. "Yes, I will," I said quietly. And I will try to, although what being "nice" means here I don't really know. I would like him to have a life he could take pride in. Whatever that is. It's a mystery to me why he hasn't wanted something more for himself than this utterly dependent life at home. And baffling why he hasn't wanted to earn money for cars and stereos and computers and girlfriends, even though I sense the ethical problems he may have around some objects, or with employment. Maybe he's happy. Maybe he thinks his mom and dad need him. Then I tell myself again that it's none of my business. At thirty, a man has to make his own choices. Later in the evening Linda was extremely discouraged by her inability to read her e-mail. I think she's been limping along with it, perhaps regaining some comprehension some days and losing it on others. She read a letter out loud to me to show me that she could see and recognize the words, but she said she had no idea what the words meant, or even what the letter was about. It was a slightly illiterate letter by Paul Hardiman, chair of the Great Dane Club of America health committee, about creating an open registry for Danes where medical assessments would be registered to a dog's title and available for all to view. I was suddenly aware of how 195

easily I can read past and through grammatically confused sentences and how puzzling these must be to her. The open-registry idea had been discussed in half a dozen or more e-mail comments that I had seen in Linda's mail queue over the past week, but she said she didn't remember them. She said she was going to have to get me to look after her mail—I don't know whether that was an invitation or a prediction of one. I didn't ask. Then she said that she'd been having dizziness over the last week or so but hadn't told us. She sat slumped in her chair, looking crushed and small. I put my arm around her and she put an arm around my waist. This morning she is back at her computer, trying again to read the mail. February 25, 2000 Linda has definitely stopped coming down for coffee in the morning—at least she hasn't been down for several days. From the number of video tapes she has stacked in the hall for me to rerecord when I get up in the mornings, I think she's probably awake most of the night and falling asleep around dawn. I take water and her decadron to her, but usually it's noon or later before she's awake enough to take them. Today, after we'd had a brief discussion about having steak and chips for dinner and I was about to go back downstairs, she said to me, "I will make it clear that." She pondered a moment and then said, "Anyway, I will get it done." What I think she meant was that she would get the steaks out of the freezer, or maybe she meant that she would cook them. I had the impression that the phrases she was using were ones she'd once used as a lawyer talking to other lawyers or to clients. After dinner yesterday I called John and Shirley and suggested that if they wanted to share their prize bottle of 1996 E&E Shiraz with Linda that they might want to do it soon. I told John that she might be up and alert two weeks or a month from now, but that given the way her condition had been deteriorating I couldn't guarantee it. They rushed over right away. I tried to alert Linda, but she was sleeping and impossible to rouse. I tried again when they arrived. After we'd been talking for about an hour 196

she came downstairs, surprised to have visitors and indignant that I hadn't called her. She told them roughly what I'd told them. That she wasn't doing very well. That she might not be able to speak to them the next time she saw them. She announced this clearly, though, talking slowly, and taking her time to begin sentences. They are going to come over Saturday with Greek takeout food. I'm to have the E&E ready, along with a bottle of 1986 Chateau Musar. February 27, 2000 Dinner last night went really well. I set the table early with our best Limoges and our Riedel glassware. Linda ate more food, mostly calimaraki, than she'd eaten for the last three or four days combined. The most obvious sign of her illness was her impatience. We had barely sat down and begun passing the various dishes around when she demanded that I serve the wine. We were all a little amused since the food was only half served and she'd hardly put any on her plate yet. A little later, when her glass was still a third full and there was still wine in the decanter, she demanded that I serve the next bottle. And when the second bottle was about half drunk, she commanded me to go to the cellar and get a third bottle. John was concerned about having to drive home and indicated that he and Shirley didn't require a third bottle. But Linda insisted, until I suggested that we have a liqueur, perhaps a Sabra, instead. She thought that was a great idea. I brought glasses and the bottle and served everyone, but Linda kept asking me to refill her glass. Her hand isn't steady enough to fill a liqueur glass. She had seven glasses while the rest of each had one. She went slowly up to bed as soon as John and Shirley left, and I expected she would sleep for hours. But an hour later she was back, apparently sleepless and stone sober, to get herself a dish of ice cream. Today after supper Linda got a phone call from Sara, who's back safely from Mexico. She's off to her company's offices in Minnesota tomorrow night and will be coming to see us on Friday.

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February 29, 2000 Busy day yesterday. Our Dane-breeder friend Cheryl Magnotta, from Pennsylvania, came up for the day with a puppy she was taking to our vet to have its ears cropped. Apparently there's no one near her in Pennsylvania, or even in Buffalo—which she had to pass through on her way here— who is now cropping ears. Linda had a blood test scheduled at the Cancer Center today. I drove her to it early so we could continue on to the vet's office to meet Cheryl. It was n A.M. when we got there, and the puppy would not be ready to travel until two, so we brought Cheryl back to our house. Fortunately she's a great talker, full of dog-show stories, opinions about dogs, and information about what U.S. shows Seizer might do well at. She's still planning to breed one or two of her bitches to him later this year. She thinks he could place in the U.S. top twenty this year—that he could beat the leading Danes. Linda sat quietly at the end of table, looking increasingly tired. Her wig had slipped backward. Cheryl talked on, graciously pretending not to notice that there was anything amiss \vith Linda. Or so I think. When Cheryl left to get her puppy and return home Linda could hardly get to her feet. I had to help her up the stairs to bed then rush to do some grocery shopping and get to an appointments-committee interview and meeting at the university. I had spent what seemed like: the best part of last week at the university—it was supposed to be our spring break— attending job candidates' lectures and interviews. Linda, said she fancied duck for dinner—frozen, seasoned, ready-to-cook halves of duck. Her illness has been altering her tastes in food, and some days it's hard to find something that she wants to eat. I managed to find the duck at Loblaws, as well as some fresh asparagus, and I left them for her. I came home around eight, and she had the duck on the table, beautifully cooked, fifteen minutes after I got in. Linda ate most of her duck, and good portions of home fries and asparagus. But she was still very tired and unhappy about feeling so tired. 198

March i, 2000 Linda had a quiet day today, as far as I know. She woke up just before I left for work, at 11:30. She wanted to know what I wanted for dinner. She always asks the question this way—what do I want, although I will eat almost anything and she has difficulty finding things she still likes. I say, "What would you like?" and she gets angry—"Don't give me that bullshit again." I think her difficulty is that she can't remember the names of food, or what it is she still likes, so my question traps her and frustrates her. I try to think of things that she likes and say I want them, but she can also see through that, and she gets angry that I am not answering her question honestly, or she says that she no longer likes the food I've suggested. Today I suggest steak, knowing it's at least easy for her to cook. She asks what we will have with it. I remember that we had French fries recently and that she often doesn't care for them now, so I suggest a baked potato. "How do I do that?" she asks. I say that she washes them and puts them in the microwave for four to eight minutes each, turning them halfway through. She says, "I don't remember that—it sounds weird. In the microwave?" I joke that she's baked potatoes this way a thousand times since we got our first microwave in 1972. She says, "I don't remember. I don't know. And what do I do with them after?" I tell her that we break them open, stuff the inside with butter, and put sour cream and Parmesan cheese on top. She looks at me blankly. "If you say so," she says. My steak comes out cold and still partly frozen in the middle; hers, somewhat thinner, comes out overdone. Our oven has always tended to grill hotter near the back, and so over the years she has placed the thicker steak at the back and the thinner at the front, but she must have forgotten that too. She likes rare meat, so I pretend to prefer the well-done meat that she has, and we exchange several pieces. She eats most of her ten-ounce steak, but she's depressed by the cooking experience. "Have you called the Cancer Center?" she asks. She wants to know if I've told them about her increasing symptoms. I feel guilty that I haven't but also pleased that she wants me to call. I resolve to try to call tomorrow. 199

March 2, 2000 Rose, the head nurse at the Cancer Center, returned my call this morning while I was out shopping. She left a message that Dr. Macdonald recommends increasing Linda's decadron dosage from half a milligram twice daily to a milligram twice daily. But Linda's already on a milligram twice daily—Dr. Macdonald set her dosage at that level nearly three weeks ago when I phoned the center from Toronto. It makes me wonder how closely the center is following Linda's case. They have so many patients. The television news is still saturated with provincial complaints about the lack of funding for health care in Paul Martin's federal budget. Our premier, Mike Harris, is especially critical—hypocritically so, when it was his cutbacks three years ago that gutted emergency services and overloaded cancer clinics like London's. The center doesn't even remember Linda by name. Whenever I call I have to dig out her case number. I don't tell Linda how poorly the clinic responded to my call—I don't want to damage whatever confidence she has in it. I'm really tired. I've been having more trouble sleeping. I get to bed by one and then wake up at four, full of worries about tasks I have to do. I have to pay the bills. Have to get Seizer ready for his dog show tomorrow. Have to finish an article I've promised Capilano Review. Have to ship over two hundred copies of Open Letter that have been ordered recently. Have to complete an application for Open Letter's annual Canada Council grant. Have to finish typesetting the winter issue. Have to do marking for my graduate course. Have to buy Linda more ice cream. She looks even more tired. She told me this morning that she hasn't been asleep for two days. But she hasn't taken a sleeping pill. I assume that the inability to get to sleep must also be one of her symptoms. The evening television news announces that Sandra Schmirler, the women's Olympic curling champion, has died, at thirty-six, of esophageal cancer. There are clips of her last interviews, in which she's gaunt and, like Linda, wearing a hat to conceal her baldness. Her voice falters when she talks about the poor odds that she will survive. She clearly wants to live. 200

Linda can't even articulate such thoughts, although I suspect she has them. Premature death must be most enormous to those who are about to suffer it. I think. The few times I've hinted at what I think she might feel about dying she's said, "Shut up, we're not talking about that." I guess that tells me. I wonder how prompt the care was that Schmirler received. March 3, 2000 I'm writing this on my laptop in my van near Orangeville, where Seizer has just won Best of Breed and is waiting to be shown in Group. I bought a special adapter at Christmastime on eBay that lets me run my laptop through the van's cigarette-lighter socket. If I were home I probably wouldn't have time to be writing, or looking over and cleaning up the rushed notes I made in this journal yesterday. Last year I would have phoned Linda and let her know how Seizer had done, but I don't today because she might well be asleep. I phone Mike instead, and I make sure he's given her her decadron pills—I left for this show at around eight this morning. He says he did, although she was half asleep and probably doesn't remember. She's sleeping now. He says he heard her at around 3:30 in the garage, which is under his bedroom, probably rummaging in the freezer for ice cream. We still haven't heard from Sara about how she will be coming today. I tell Mike to check Linda's e-mail for a message from her—she doesn't know that her mom has given up altogether on reading e-mail. Something else I noticed on Thursday on her computer and didn't think much about until now—an unfinished mah-jongg game with at least two matches left unused. It was there all day, and it may still be there in the background. That's the last thing Linda's looked at on her computer. I guess she can no longer see—or is it perceive?—well enough to play that or solitaire. In the last few months she's spent several hours a day playing such games. In my undergraduate Canadian-literature class this week I taught the students about contemporary eschatology through the intensely secular and material visions of Phyllis Webb and John Newlove, and the 201

place of the Holocaust and ecological crisis in those visions. I kept thinking also about cancer and carcinogens. Back home after the show I find Linda playing solitaire on her computer. I mention it to Mike, but he says he was watching her and she was playing terribly. She's decided to microwave some frozen spaghetti sauce for dinner. Sara's arriving on the 6:45 bus. She comes in with Mexican T-shirts for Mike and her mom, a bottle of Margaux for her mom, and a guayaberra for me. Linda bakes some baguettes and makes garlic bread to go with the spaghetti. At the end of the meal, Linda asks what we will have for dinner tomorrow. She suggests duck with green peas and wild rice. Except she can't remember the words "duck" or "peas," or the name of the supermarket—Loblaws—where someone will have to go to buy the duck. She says, "How about some—oh, I can't do it. How about... that stuff that comes with sauce?" I ask if it's a vegetable or a meat? "A meat," she says. We reach the duck, then the peas, then the rice, through a version of twenty questions. Amazingly, Linda keeps her humor throughout, laughing at our guesses, and trying her best to give us clues. March 5, 2000 When I got back just before five, Sara told me that John and Shirley were coming over, "around seven," she thought. She'd ordered takeout Greek food, on Linda's instructions, so we could eat early, because Sara was leaving on the 7:20 train. Again Linda ate enormous quantities of calamaraki, and a big baklava. Sara told me privately she'd had some trouble with the baklava—Linda wanted some but couldn't remember the name of it, only that it was pastry and had honey in it. Linda'd been drinking white wine most of the afternoon, an expensive white Burgundy that I'd thought we might serve John and Shirley, but she seemed unaffected by it. When it came time to drive Sara to the train station, Linda started for the back door as if planning to wave goodbye. "Mommy will sew," she said, then she paused as if realizing this wasn't the right word. "Mommy will cook," she tried again. 202

In the car I asked Sara who'd taken the message about John and Shirley's visit. Linda had. I waited with Sara until the train arrived, and got back home at 7:30. John and Shirley hadn't arrived, and Linda was getting impatient. She decided to go up to bed. I wondered if Linda had got the day wrong. She didn't think so, and she showed me her cigarette package on which she'd crudely written "S" and "J" and "7:00" Around 8:15 they arrived, with a pot of daffodils about to bloom, apologizing for being fifteen minutes late. "That's okay?" John asked, evidently aware of how small things can upset Linda these days. They'd remembered that Linda's appointment with Dr. Macdonald is tomorrow. Linda came slowly downstairs and shuffled into the TV room, where we all sat down. I opened some more wine. They were asking Linda what she wanted from this appointment. She looked very frustrated. "I want help," she said. "I want something better than this . . . this last. .. stuff!!" John told her, "You'll have to tell him that." I recounted to John and Shirley how badly our last visit to Dr. Macdonald had gone, with me trying to describe Linda's recent difficulties and Linda interrupting to say I was "lying" and "inventing." Linda sort of agreed and joked that this time she would have to just grunt and let her tongue hang out. I told John how some of Dr. Macdonald's language tests—particularly the one where he pointed to objects and asked Linda to name them— didn't seem to test her actual language problems. To illustrate, I pointed to some objects and asked her to name them. "Wine glass," "watch," "bottle," she responded quickly, although a few minutes ago she had been groping for language to describe her increasing disabilities and had called Sammy, our cat, "Stevie," and me "Mike." John advised us to have a plan to persuade Dr. Macdonald to discontinue temozolomide and try some other treatment. I said I was going to have to get Linda herself to talk to him, as she does to us, about how little the drug seems to be doing. I had to get her to talk more and not just answer yes or no. It was better for her to unwittingly demonstrate her problems than for me to describe them and have her deny my recollections. As they were 203

leaving, John followed me to the kitchen with two of the wine glasses. He suggested quietly that I write down a description of the episodes in which Linda's deterioration was evident and give it to Dr. Macdonald, so that she didn't get an opportunity to argue with them.

March 6, 2000 Linda got up early this morning all ready for her 9 A.M. appointment. I got up early too and got the dogs fed and exercised before we had to leave. At the clinic the hematology lab dealt with her quickly, and we had twenty minutes before seeing Dr. Macdonald. Linda decided to take the elevator down to the lower level and walk across the open courtyard to get a donut. She waved off my offer of assistance, although I did walk her to elevator and see her on. Then I went back to the balcony rail beside the clinic waiting area, where I could watch her emerge from the elevator area and cross the courtyard. Minutes passed before she came; into view. I have no idea where she was. Perhaps riding up and down in the elevator? Perhaps wandering on another floor? Although we'd been in the courtyard dozens of times, and although the coffee shop was in clear view, she stopped several times to orient herself, perhaps to recall what she was doing, before shuffling off again. She did the same thing on the way back, as if worried she might not be heading towards the elevators. She disappeared into the elevator area. I checked my watch, concerned that she might not find the right floor. A minute later, though, she shuffled into view. Not until 9:50 did Rose call us into the examining room. We spent most of the time joking about the predictability of the delay. Linda seemed more patient than she'd been before, although I think what's happened is that she's become less aware of time passing. Several times she looked at her watch, as if baffled by it, and then she asked me what it said. I asked if it was difficult for her to read a watch, and she said it was. I told her the time was 9:35. She said she wished I wouldn't say things like "9:35." I asked why. She paused and then said they didn't mean anything to her. I reflected that she might be having trouble with the implied 204

subtraction in a concept like "9:35"—I asked if she would prefer that I say "twenty-five to ten"? She shook her head, no. Perhaps because I'd phoned twice in the past month with news of Linda's increasing difficulties, Rose looked carefully at her when she called her. Linda had trouble getting to her feet, getting out of the sofa we were sitting on. Both Rose and I reached out to help her. "Take my arm," Rose said, and she encouraged Linda to lean on her as they went down the corridor. "You're not looking well," she said, as Linda slowly sat down in the examining room. "I'm doing . . . terrible!" Linda replied. "It's not working," she said. "What's not working?" Rose asked. "The . . . stuff!" Linda replied with exasperation. "It's doing nothing. I'm just going downhill." Rose said something else, and Linda exclaimed, "I feel nobody's doing anything. I take these pills and then for three weeks I get worse and nobody's doing anything." Rose looked puzzled, and I translated that Linda feels that she gets pills for five days, they don't work, and then she feels abandoned and desperate as her condition deteriorates for the next twenty-three days. Rose tried to explain, to me as much as to Linda, that the temozolomide was still active in the subsequent twenty-three days, but Linda interrupted, again with exasperation at being forced to speak what she felt should be obvious, "But it's not doing anything!" Rose asked if increasing the decadron this past Friday had helped. I pointed out that Dr. Macdonald had already made that increase two weeks before, and so last Friday's recommended dosage didn't constitute an increase. She looked alarmed and said I should have called back and told her. I said, "I guess the first increase didn't get charted," and she nodded. I explained that the decadron increase two weeks ago had given Linda a few days of improvement, but she'd quickly fallen back and become even worse. Linda disagreed. "It did nothing," she said emphatically. Poor Rose looked back and forth between the two of us. "You may not have noticed an improvement," I said to Linda, "but Mike and I did." She grunted skeptically. 205

Rose left and in a few moments Dr. Macdonald arrived. He asked Linda how she was. "Worse" she said. There was silence. So I said to Linda, "Why don't you tell Dr. Macdonald what you think of the temozolomide treatment?" "It's useless. Doing nothing," she said. Dr. Macdonald asked what she meant, and she answered, "I take these pills, I get worse, and nobody does anything. Look at me." He had her sit on the examining table and then investigated her field of vision. She seemed to be able to see virtually nothing on the right side, and with her eyes closed she seemed confused about when he was touching her right hand. He did some strength tests of her arms, although I couldn't see what the result was. Afterward he asked some more questions about how she'd been doing at home. I commented that she was having trouble telling time, and I recounted how she'd just been telling me that the clock hands often seemed meaningless to her, and that she'd complained about being told such things as it was "4:35," because "4:35" didn't mean anything to her either. "That's not true, you're getting it wrong," she exclaimed. "Well you tell the doctor about the problem, then," I said. She looked at him blankly. "I can't do it," she said. Dr. Macdonald told us he'd decided not to continue with the temozolomide and not to give any treatment until he had the results of a new MRI. Linda groaned. "I'm just going to get worse," she said. Dr. Macdonald tried to smile. "They can often do them quickly," he said. "I'm going to call them right away." I asked what further treatments might be possible. He said he was thinking of high-intensity, highly focused radiation, which could give some temporary help, but treatment would depend on the location and size of the tumor. There were also other chemotherapies that might be helpful. In the meantime he was prescribing a further doubling of the decadron to two milligrams twice daily. "I don't know what's decadron," Linda mumbled. "It's also called dexamethesone," Dr. Macdonald said. "I don't know this dexy stuff either. It might be. I take some little pills and a big pill." 206

"The big pill is ranitidine," said Dr. Macdonald tentatively. Linda continued looking puzzled. I wondered if she really had forgotten what decadron was or if she was just doing a superb job of grunting and letting her tongue hang out. Dr. Macdonald said he had to go and write the prescription. As he neared the door I handed him a sheet of paper on which I'd printed a brief narrative of some details of Linda's difficulties over the last month. "What's that?" Linda asked. "Don't believe it. He's been inventing things again!" This afternoon Rose phoned me with the news that Linda has an MRI appointment on Wednesday at 12:30 P.M. and another appointment wit Dr. Macdonald on Friday at 12:30. I'm supposed to be in Quebec City on Friday. I'm wondering if I should cancel. March 8, 2000 Sara phoned last night to say she was going to take Friday off so she could come to London and see Dr. Macdonald with her mother. I've decided to go to Quebec City as planned. I don't think my missing Linda's appointment will hurt anything. If anything, it may help. There's a dynamic between Linda and myself that seems to oblige her to deny any unflattering report I might make of her, even if denying might mislead Dr. Macdonald and jeopardize her treatment. I took Linda to her MRI today—an uneventful but tedious visit, and tiring for Linda. Twice she had to walk down a two-hundred-foot corridor between parts of the radiology section where the IV drip is prepared and where the MRI equipment itself is situated. Either poor planning or another sign of an overloaded medical system. As she shuffles along I'm thinking that next time I may have to request a wheelchair. If there is a next time. George has written to say that it's six months ago today that Angela died. "I miss her like crazy," he says. "Yesterday I pulled open a drawer and saw her housecoats."

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March 10, 2000 Here in Quebec City I left my cell phone on all afternoon in case Dr. Macdonald needed to consult me during Linda's appointment. I'd told Mike I would do this. There were no calls. When I phoned Mike tonight, interrupting their dinner, I discovered that the MRI hadn't been good. The tumor has grown at least fifty percent since the last one, Mike thinks, although Dr. Macdonald was reticent about estimating its size. It has outgrown the original tumor, and now it has almost enveloped and reconstricted the left ventricle. Mike thinks it has moved somewhat into both the frontal and occipital lobes, as well as occupying most of the upper part of the thalamus. "What functions are located there?" I ask him. He's not sure. He says he doesn't know enough about brain anatomy. I tell him gently that we need to know so we can know what symptoms to watch for, symptoms we might otherwise miss. He agrees and says he will investigate. He's a good son. But the growth of the tumor means it is now too big for any focused radiation treatment. Dr. Macdonald has prescribed a new chemotherapy, Mike says, but not one he has a lot of confidence in. He told them that he had first prescribed the drugs most likely to reduce the tumor and then the next most likely, the temozolomide. So the latest one, called etoposide, ranks below those in probable effectiveness. But, Mike says, he also noted that Linda's tumor was behaving unpredictably and could surprise us by responding to it. Mike didn't sound very hopeful. I asked if Linda understood her situation. He replied that Dr. Macdonald had described everything in an optimistic, almost cheerfully confident tone. I said I would phone again on her line and speak with her. He said she was now eating her dessert and that I should wait five minutes before calling. Sara then broke in to say she will call me after 8 P.M., when her cell phone plan offers free calling. When I called Linda she sounded understandably discouraged, except when telling me that she could drink wine with the new medication. She also says she likes the fact that she takes it for twenty-one days and then 208

has two weeks off to rest before the next twenty-one-day cycle. Says she will feel as if something is being done for her. But she is doubtful that she will make it for the second round of the drug. She thinks she'll be in hospital. I tell her that at least we know we've done the right thing—-in putting pressure on Dr. Macdonald to discontinue the temozolomide and arrange an early MRI. The MRI shows that she was right when she said the temozolomide wasn't working. It's a bitter satisfaction, however— fortunately she doesn't seem to notice that. Sara had slightly different things to tell me. She said that they had to wait a very long time to see Dr. Macdonald—from one o'clock until almost three. Rose showed them into an examining room just before two and said Dr. Macdonald might be a while. Linda said she was tired and asked if she could lie down on the examining table. Rose helped her up and then asked if she would like to have the light out. Linda said she would, so she, Sara, and Mike stayed in the dark for about an hour. When Dr. Macdonald arrived he was surprised to find the room in darkness, and he called out, "Is anyone in there?" They had to wake Linda up to talk with him. Sara commented that Linda had been surprisingly patient, however—she was perhaps unaware of how much time was passing. I said I wasn't surprised by the wait—that the center books its appointments a month or more in advance and probably has to squeeze emergency appointments like Linda's into an already full schedule. Sara also recalled that at one point, when Dr. Macdonald was saying that the tumor had been responding unpredictably, she interrupted to ask whether that meant that the original diagnosis of an oligodendroglioma had been wrong. He'd hesitated and then said that yes, it probably had been. That the tumor was clearly a glioma now, both infiltrative and boundaried, and that if it had been a simple oligodendroglioma it would have responded more to the initial treatments. She also asked if it was no longer low-to-medium grade, and he said something that implied to her that it was now medium-to-high grade. Sara thought he was going to say more, but Linda interrupted and said she had to go to the bathroom. Sara 209

stepped out to show her the way, and when she returned, ten or fifteen seconds later, both Dr. Macdonald and his nurse were gone. They may have been glad to get away. She stepped back out into the corridor to watch for her mother coming out of the bathroom and noticed them conversing in an office across the hall. She thinks she heard Dr. Macdonald say "anaplastic"—which describes an aggressive, fast-growing tumor. Of course, he might have been saying "not anaplastic" . .. All that was left to do was to pick up the prescription for the new drug at the center's pharmacy. Linda decided she needed a cigarette and had Mike take her out to the car. Mike came back in and met Sara at the pharmacy. While they were there, Rose came by and told them that she was shocked by how quickly their mother's condition had worsened. Sara says she asked her what we could expect next, if the new drug proves no better than the last one. Rose apparently said that her mobility would be the next thing to go—she'd have difficulty walking, even to the bathroom. After that, she said, things would move pretty fast. A nice way of putting it. March n, 2000 I recall having strange dreams last night. In one I am in a spacious public washroom made of rough stone, seemingly in England. A homeless young man has done his laundry there and has hung a dozen good-quality sweaters and shirts up to dry. I admire his determination to dress well. In another dream I am admiring my own clothing. I am wearing several layers, including a western shirt, a brocade vest, a down vest, and a sports jacket. I think how natty I look, except for my pink-suede-paneled black brogues, which are quite worn, and which I bought in the: 19505. In a third dream I am in my parents' home in Abbotsford with Mike and Sara, who are young adults, as they are now. My father has died recently, and my mother is ill. A young man has come to sort the papers my dad has left in the closet. I could have sorted them myself if I'd had the time, but I've been preoccupied with my mother. For some reason the young man is polishing his shoes on the basement stairs, where I used to polish mine. I 210

have a hunch all these men are me. When my dad died, fifteen years ago, I had to take over his role of looking after my mother, and Linda helped me a lot, if only by being there for me to talk to. When she dies, and I know she will, I will be exposed and alone and responsible all over again. I also vaguely recall a dream in which I am traveling once again with Linda somewhere in Europe. I wish I were. I don't know what I should be doing now. I've arranged to take Seizer to two back-to-back Great Dane specialty shows near Pittsburgh on April 8 and 9. That's just about a month from now. It's an important show, and a healthy Linda would have wanted him to be at it. Poor Linda. She doesn't want my pity. She doesn't want a funeral. But I don't want to be away when she dies. She might live another few months. The drug might work and she might live another year. Sara said Dr. Macdonald told them he hoped they would all be in the same room a year from now considering the same questions she was persisting in asking—that some patients have lived for a year on this new drug, although it also causes leukemia if taken for that long. This afternoon I phoned Linda again. The phone rings four times and then Sara answers. She says she hasn't seen her mother yet today—that she hasn't been down for coffee or pills. Then Linda picks up and says hello weakly. Her TV is blaring in the background. I hear her fumbling unsuccessfully to mute it. Sara says she'll go upstairs and help her. Linda comes back on the line, and Sara. I tell Linda that I'm going out tonight and so I'm phoning her now. She replies something to the effect that she hadn't expected me home that early. Sara says, "No, he won't be home till late tomorrow." I tell Linda that I will call her later, and she says, "Okay, 'bye darling," with a lot of feeling. I know Sara will try to explain, although I wonder if Linda will understand. March 13, 2000 Linda didn't eat very much dinner tonight. I cooked chicken cacciatore and basmati rice much like she used to cook them, but when she came 211

down and saw them she screwed up her nose and then put very little on her plate. But she didn't have enough language to explain why she didn't like them. She also didn't like the Barolo I served with it, a 1994 Contorno Sori Ginestra. It's Mike's birthday, and I wanted to serve a dinner both he and Linda would enjoy. He doesn't like many of the foods Linda and I like—roast beef, roast lamb, roast duck, barbecued pork spareribs. Linda complained that I'd led her to expect something delicious. I asked her what she'd been hoping for. She struggled to speak for a long time, smiling nevertheless. "That stuff... you know, that whatch amadinger. That thing that you do ... that's done ..." She paused. "I can see it, but I can't say it." I began asking her my twenty questions—"Is it poultry?" It wasn't. "Is it beef?" "I don't think so," she said. "You know, that stuffl It comes in boxes, like this." She gestured. "You mean rack of lamb?" I suggested. "Well maybe. No, it's sort of flat." "Ah, duck!" "Yes, duck," she said. "But not the orange." She pronounced "orange" in the French way, as in "canard a Forange." "The other one." "You mean the Peking duck," I said. That was it. I didn't point out that she'd earlier said that it wasn't poultry. She was so pleased to have identified her nonorange duck. When I got home early this morning, a little after midnight, I thought she was a little better and that the new chemotherapy might be working, but now I'm beginning to think I was unconsciously expiccting her to be very bad and saw her as "better" in contrast to my expectations. She's very unsteady on her feet today, shuffling along more weakly than I remember and veering rightward into walls and furniture. Not sure whether this is because she can't see well from her right eye or because she has increased right-side weakness. Last night she'd waited up for me, and we'd talked to Mike about his birthday. He'd joked about becoming an old man. Linda had said she was 212

going to get him some money today for his present. Tonight she asked me if I'd got the money. Or she tried to ask. "Have you got Mike his ... his papers?" I must have looked puzzled. "His . . . metal," she tried. "Do you mean his birthday money?" I realized immediately that I shouldn't have taken her announcement that she was going to get his money herself seriously. "I thought you were probably going to loan Mike your bank card and have him get it himself, from a wall!" I said. Mike laughed and muttered, "From a wall!" "You asshole," she said. "You could have done it." After Mike had left the room I asked her how much we were giving him. "I don't remember," she said. "I told him, though, yesterday—you'll have to ask him." I did ask Mike a few moments ago, during the evening news. "Three hundred dollars," he said. I was shocked—I'd expected a figure more like one hundred dollars. I'm not sure we have that much left in our checking account. We've been spending a lot more these days on takeout food and expensive ready-to-eats like Peking duck. But I didn't let on to Mike that I was shocked. There's still a little money in the line of credit. Then there's my dog-show account, which I fund from my publishing royalties. And Linda may be right that if I can afford to spend $240 paying a handler to show Seizer I can afford three hundred for a birthday gift. In principle, anyway. Linda's always preferred to spend money on principle rather than to plan or budget. To her, it's miserly people who try to plan their spending. And, of course, why should she think of planning ahead now? March 16, 2000 Linda fell last night. She had gone to the TV room fireplace to get four newly recorded video tapes from the mantle. She stepped back, lost her balance, and fell backwards onto the antique coffee table, snapping the top of it from its eighteenth-century frame and pedestal. The glass teapot went skidding across the rug. But Linda was only chagrined, not hurt. She was still holding three of the video tapes. She gathered them up, 213

along with her cigarettes, and started upstairs, but she only got a little way before calling for Mike to come and help her. This morning when I took her a glass of water and her pills, she stared at them as if baffled by what I was asking her to do. She; took the glass in her right hand, but she needed the left to hold herself up and so had no hand for the pills. I offered to place them in her mouth,, and she nodded, took them in her lips, and swallowed them. She said, "How are you?"— but I'm not sure that this was what she wanted to say. It may have been the only phrase she could speak. I don't think she's getting any better, despite the change in medication. I cooked dinner again last night and plan to do so tonight. Just before she fell Linda had thanked me for having looked after dinner without bothering to ask her. I worry about how she's managing to get from her bed to the bathroom. March 18, 2000 Seizer and I went to an early-morning dog show in Windsor. When I get back, shortly after noon, Sara is busy helping her mother sort papers in her study. "David Dolson is coming," she says. David is the lawyer Linda worked with some years ago—the one she'd she confided her illness to last month and asked to take over her stored files. They have a couple of garbage bags partly filled and several piles of papers. Sara asks me to get her some file folders and says that she's appalled at the mess the papers are in. There are boxes of unsorted notes, wills, property deeds, affidavits—all belonging to the files of various clients and mixed in with office supplies, packages of candy, blank stationery, and miscellaneous postage stamps. I suspect that most of the legal papers here are duplicates, or drafts, but I don't say so because only Linda would know for sure, and she can no longer read or remember. She stares uncomprehendingly at page after page and nods when Sara manages to identify what client it belongs to and create a file for it. There are seven or eight such boxes. By evening Sara has three boxes of sorted files stacked at the top of the stairs, and two others filled with material to be shredded. There are three 214

or four empty boxes leaning crazily in the study, and two or three others still unsorted. It's like a scene in a household getting ready to move. "It looks like someone's moving out," I say quietly to Sara. "You know what she said?" she replies. "She told me she needed to pack." We both know that "pack" is probably the only word Linda could think of, but we both feel distressed by it anyway. After supper Linda's too tired to do any more. Sara asks me to wake her in the morning. David is coming around eleven, just after I have to leave for Windsor. March 20, 2000 "The light is out in the dining room," Linda called up to me on the third floor at around one o'clock this afternoon. I went down, and, sure enough, two bulbs were burned out in the chandelier, so I began to replace them. "No," she said, pointing to the TV room. "The light's out in the dining room." So I went to the TV room and turned on the light. "No, no," she exclaimed, having followed me. She went over and pointed to the VCR. "The light is out." Sure enough, the red recording light was out. She must have heard the machine switch off at one o'clock. I said something to that effect, and she asked what time it was and began setting her watch. She thought it was rnidmorning. She wears a clockwork Rolex and now often forgets to wind it. But I had forgotten to program the VCR for the afternoon shows, so it was a good thing she'd called. I quickly programmed the i P.M. show and started the machine; then I programmed it for the rest of the afternoon. She's been having a hard time yesterday and today. She hasn't been able to climb back upstairs to her room without help, although she still manages to get down without us noticing. She's had a frustrating time communicating. She called me yesterday to turn her bedroom VCR "off." When I went and looked it wasn't playing, so I assumed she must want it turned on. I started it, and she said, "No. I want it off." So I turned the VCR off again. She grimaced and banged her head on the mattress in both real and mock frustration. "I want it off," she cried. So I turned the 215

TV set off too. "No, no, no!" she said, banging her head some more on the mattress. Then she pointed at the tape cassette door. "Off," she said. I thought some more, and then for some reason I wondered if she wanted the tape run backward to the beginning of the program. "You want it rewound?" I asked. "Yes," she sighed. I rewound it to the beginning of the program then offered to stop it. "No, no," she said. So I let it continue rewinding. "To the beginning of the tape?" I asked. "Yes. It wouldn't go," she said. She has been rewinding the tapes herself in order to begin playing them, but for some reason she'd had trouble this time. She's been eating well, however. Sara cooked Greek food last night, and Linda ate a good helping of calamaraki. Tonight I offered to roast a chicken, and to my surprise she said "Good." When I offered to roast one last week, she'd said "Yecch!" But she ate a good portion of it tonight, along with the beans and home fries I served with it. The big event yesterday was David's visit. He said he'd had no idea how much Linda had declined since he last spoke to her. "That was the old Linda," he said to Sara, "but this isn't." He was shocked, but he looked at the files and talked about them in his usual rapid-fire way, Sara reported. Linda could understand very little of what he said, but Sara tried to take a few notes and remember what he'd recommended. David didn't seem to realize how little Linda was capable of, not knowing that if you explain things to her simply and slowly she can still understand. David recommended shredding many of the documents that were clearly unimportant. He offered to take over Linda's trust accounts and drafted a letter for Linda to sign to make the transfer. Sara typed it, printed it, and successfully explained it to her. March 23, 2000 I finally arranged to have Linda's telephone disconnected. She wanted to be free of having it ring and feeling obliged to try to answer it. For me, disconnecting it has been one more symbolic loss, one more pulling of the plugs that link her to normal life, or simply to life. She's a bit concerned 216

about Susie trying to call and finding her phone disconnected, but she clearly feels too ill to be worried about anyone else calling. Doesn't think her mother will call. I have the phone company place a message on her old line indicating that her number has been changed to my number. But I decide I have to tell Susie. When I phone her she's not there, and I have to leave a message for her to call me. Probably alerting her that something's amiss. When I do speak to her she seems shocked, but not as shocked as I'd anticipated. She had noticed oddities in Linda's recent conversations with her, even though she'd dismissed them. She agrees that we shouldn't tell their mother—not because of Jackie's health, but because she could easily do something bizarre and troublesome, like turn up on our doorstep. I returned Linda's rented telephone yesterday afternoon and then drove across town to the printshop that prints Open Letter for me. Along the route I passed a Canadian Tire, a Beaver Lumber, a White Rose garden center—all the places where she and I had often shopped while doing house projects like repainting rooms or replacing light fixtures or building our wine cellar or planting fall bulbs. Not only will there be no more such projects, but they also seem irrelevant, trivial. Yet I also miss them, intensely. The stores where we shopped seem painfully empty. Still, I bought an infuser teapot this morning on eBay. Mike had badly chipped our Bodum while washing it last week. Linda still needs her nightly cup of Earl Grey. Linda is talking less. I think Mike and I are also initiating fewer conversations in order not to cause her stress. She's still coming down for dinner, but yesterday that may have been her only trip down. March 24, 2000 Heard a thump yesterday around noon and ran to Linda's room to find her lying on the floor between the far side of her bed and her TV set. The floor there is littered with video cassettes that she won't let us move and pools of cigarette butts and ash from the numerous times she's knocked her ashtray off the edge of the bed. She won't let us clean these up either, 217

although it's not clear why. She seems to think that if we move the video cassettes she'll lose track of which ones are which. She was wearing just a short nightgown, which was now up over her waist. She had raised herself up on her arms and was trying to get her feet under her. I reached down to help, and she said crossly, "What are you trying to do?" I said, "Do you need some help?" She shook her head and slowly scrabbled to a kneeling position. She kept looking at the marble fireplace, which was just beyond the TV set. She finally managed to grasp the fireplace and pull herself partly up. She then began reaching for a can of Poppycock, which was on the mantle, on top of a video cassette. She grasped it with her left hand and then lost her grip on the fireplace with her weakened right hand. She fell again, knocking both the cassette and the Poppycock to the floor. I picked them up to get them out of her way. "What are you doing?" she asked angrily. It was pretty clear now that she was on a mission to get the can of Poppycock, which I believe had been left uneaten on the mantle for a year or more. "I'm putting it on the bed for you," I said, and I put it beside her ashtray on the side where she likes to lie. She glared as if this wasn't what she wanted and then began trying to twist herself around to face the bed. She was still pretty well facedown on the floor. I reached down to pull her up by her armpits. "No," she said. "Don't." She started to pull herself om:o the bed, like a dying fish pulling itself along a wharf. She lay at the foot of the bed for a moment, catching her breath, and then crawled back to where I'd put the Poppycock, opened it, and began eating. I was about to leave when she crawled to the other side of the bed, facing her bathroom, and sat on the edge. She then tried several times to launch herself to her feet. "Do you want help?" I asked. Slhe said nothing and launched herself again, this time becoming upright and lurching to the bathroom doorway, about seven feet away, and grasping the doorjamb. She then followed the wall to the toilet. I waited, and she managed to lurch back to the bed in the same manner. 218

She's quite fierce about her independence. I get the sense that if she were to accept help, she would feel that she was agreeing to die. But she's very much in danger of hurting herself. She must be making similar excursions from her bed throughout the day, when I'm off at the university teaching, and while Mike is sitting in his room reading. In the morning there's often a mug on her bed that has had chocolate ice cream in it, so she's even managing to get downstairs and back for ice cream while we're sleeping. God knows how many falls she has during those trips. There are a lot of mysterious bruises on her arms and legs. I had to go and teach my afternoon class of undergrads—an hour on Alden Nowlan's poetry. Mike had gone out, so Linda was alone while I was away. I rushed back after class, picking up a bottle of cheap Bulgarian red wine on the way, and began cooking a beef bourguignon in the pressure cooker. Linda was lying quietly, watching television. There was a message on my phone from Sara saying she was coming in on the afternoon train to spend Friday and Saturday with her mom. Mike came in while I was braising the meat. A little later, while the pressure cooker was simmering, Shirley Clement called to ask if they could bring dinner on Saturday night. I explained how little language Linda now had, and that I was going to be in Toronto overnight on Saturday. Shirley was pained by the speed of Linda's decline and asked if she and John could drop by this evening. I said sure. We talked some more and agreed that they'd bring dinner Sunday night, when I'd be back. Linda came down early for dinner, which I was having to time around picking up Sara at the train station. Again, she'd somehow managed to navigate the stairs and lurch down the hallway. She was grumpy that dinner wasn't going to be ready, as usual, at six, and she didn't seem to understand how Sara's 6:05 arrival made that impossible. I managed to get two bottles of wine onto the table, release the steam from the pressure cooker, and begin heating water for pasta and green peas before leaving for the station. When I got back I had to brown the mushrooms, add them and some baby carrots to the bourguignon, and thicken the gravy, while 219

also cooking the pasta and peas in the now-boiling pots of water. Sara helped me by setting the table and keeping Linda out of the kitchen. Linda was somewhat happier now—she'd managed to get the cork out of one of the wine bottles and was sitting drinking and complaining about the poor quality of the wine. By the time we got dinner on the table half the bottle was gone. After dinner I told her that John and Shirley were planning to drop by—that they weren't sure when, because Shirley had a real-estate appointment to deal with first. Linda's head sank onto her arms. "Oh no," she said in despair, "I'll be asleep. I can't do it." I said, "You can have a nap. We'll get you when they come." She nodded sadly. Mike helped her up the stairs. Around 8:30 John comes to the door by himself. Shirley's dropped him off and will return after her appointment. Linda hears him at the door and conies slowly down the stairs, wearing the clothes she's been wearing most of the day. They are stained with dinner, cigarette ash, and several spots of chocolate ice cream. John says he'd like a cup of tea, which is fine with me since I'd drunk a little too much wine myself at dinner. But Linda starts saying, "Get the stuff"—she can't remember the word for wine. This is pretty well all she seems to think about or say for the next hour. "John needs some stuff." She appears to think that John's just being polite in declining a glass of wine. She says she doesn't want any herself, but John must have some. Finally, at around 9:30, I decide; that opening a bottle of wine is a small price to placate her, so I go down to the cellar and find an interesting 1993 Argentinian cab. Shirley arrives shortly after, and she and John both accept a small glass. Except for expressing her concerns about our hospitality, Linda says little. We spend large amounts of time just sitting together silently—John, Shirley, Sara, myself. John tells a couple of long anecdotes, about his parents' ongoing move into a retirement home, and about his recurrent problems with his air-conditioning contractor. I'm not sure how much of this Linda can follow, and I think John wonders also, although the silence 220

must also be hard for Linda, with its implicit message that we know how incapable she's becoming. I look over at her sitting slouched on the couch, with her steroid-swollen face, baggy, soiled cotton pants and oversize cotton sweater, which she's been sleeping in. She's trying to tell us about something she urgently needs done. We wonder if she's talking about the telephone changes, or about her VCR, but each time she shakes her head. "I need that. . . thing . ..," she keeps trying. "I need done . . . that.. . thing ..." Then she shakes her head. "It's no use." A few minutes later she tries again, with almost the same words. We encourage her, but she comes to the same conclusion. "It's no use." I still have no idea what she wanted. Today I left early in the morning for a dog show in Toronto. I'm going to stay at Sara's small apartment again, and I plan to get a little marking done for my courses and a little writing. I want to finish a poem for a special issue of a journal that's published in Maine. I also hope to finish a small essay for Capilano Review, an essay that I've been working on now for four months. I still haven't told Noreen Golfman, president of the university English teachers association, that I won't be coming to the congress in Edmonton and presenting the paper on Kirby's The Golden Dog, which the association's referees have accepted. I phoned from the dog show to remind Mike and Sara that Linda has to go to the Cancer Center for a blood test today. I called Mike—I have to be careful to call each of the children at different times when they are both with their mom. I must not let either feel less important. And neither is. I ask Mike to try to speak to Rose about Linda's worsening condition and ask about whether the decadron dosage could be increased. He says he was planning to do that anyway. In the late afternoon I phone Sara. She says she spoke to Rose herself, flagged her down as she was paging a scheduled patient, just as Linda was shambling out of the hematology lab. I hope she hasn't melodramatically upstaged Mike—sibling rivalry seems to continue well into adulthood. I worry about them both. Rose was alarmed at how bad Linda appeared to be. Linda tried to say something to her and couldn't manage it. Rose said 221

she would call the Community Care Access Center to make an urgent request for home care, and that she would speak with Dr. Macdonald later and phone back about the decadron dosage. When she phones it's to tell us to double the dosage once again. But she also tells Sara that we should contact Linda's family doctor—that there may be nothing more that Dr. Macdonald and the Cancer Center can do, and that at such a point care should revert to the family physician. Poor Sara, I think, having to receive such news! Although I'm sure it doesn't surprise; her. Sara phones me back around 8 P.M. Someone from the Communit Care Access Center has called and wants consent to begin immediate home nursing care. Sara manages to patch together a three-way call. The woman wants to know if Linda can understand and consent. I explain how these concepts are both very different for Linda, that she can probably understand but would have great difficulty communicating her response. Sara goes to Linda and asks her if she would accept some nursing care now. We can hear Linda's annoyed response over Sara's cell phone. At best it sounds like grudging, reluctant agreement. The woman is perturbed. I explain how stubbornly and courageously Linda is resisting dying, and that to her being compelled to accept nursing care means accepting that she is that much closer to death. I am aware as I say this that if I were to say the same thing to Linda she would disagree vehemently. She doesn't want to be courageous or sentimentalized or praised—she wants to be left alone, to be independent, to be the dignified self she began struggling to be fifty years ago when she was a bright child, emotionally manipulated by a sad and needy mother. Linda doesn't like dependence, has had contempt most of her life for her mother's dependence. She's never liked people or institutions that might infringe on her independence. What is about to happen to her—becoming dependent on nursing; help whom she will see as somehow "less" than herself—is perhaps even more of a disaster for her than death.

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March 25, 2000 I woke up wondering where I was. Then immediately began thinking about how to set up the front parlor as Linda's new bedroom. Sara remarked yesterday that Rose had pointed out that we'd soon have to make this change. The woman from the Access Center had also apparently indicated that they could provide movers to help bring her bed and furniture downstairs. At the end of the three-way phone call yesterday, we agreed to delay meeting with someone from the center until Monday, when I could be there. I talked to Sara a little bit afterward. She and Mike were examining how to put heavier curtains into the room, and how to cover the glass doors between the parlor and the dining room. I told her my worries about Linda's smoking, and her increasing tendency to fall asleep unexpectedly and knock over her ashtrays. It's especially dangerous when I'm not home to hear the smoke alarm in the staircase outside her room. Both Mike and Sara sleep too far away in the house to hear it. I told Sara that for her own safety, as well as her mother's, she should wash the linens on my bed and sleep there, across from Linda's room, where she could hear the alarm. She said she would. She would also get Mike to clean and put back into operation the smoke detector over Linda's doorway. I phoned Sara again this morning. She and Mike have repaired the smoke detector outside Linda's bedroom and set up a baby-monitoring system, which Linda had bought to listen for the cries of our dogs when they were very young puppies. Wary of Linda's reaction to being monitored, they have put the monitoring unit in my bedroom doorway, on high volume, and are plugging the receiver in wherever they are working, or where Mike is sleeping. Sara assured me that it would pick up the sound of a smoke detector and was already conveying Linda's plaintive "Hello? . . . Hello?"—which she calls out whenever she needs assistance. I'm relieved. Linda's smoked in bed all our life together, but without incident. She set our house ablaze once before when deeply distressed, but not by smoking. Sometime around 1980 Linda's half-sister, Pearl, died 223

suddenly of a heart attack. I know it was around 1980 because we'd bought our Lyndhurst Avenue house in 1978 and were still renovating. Our kitchen had all its new walls and cabinets and appliances—we'd installed them ourselves—but it still had only underlay for a floor. I was upstairs, directly above, hammering on cedar paneling in a room that had been the second-floor kitchen. I was turning it into my study. Linda had decided to barbecue chicken in the backyard for supper. I could smell the chicken through the open windows where I was working;, but I could also smell something else. I ran downstairs and found the large pot that Linda used to deep-fry things roaring with flames on the kitchen stove. The flames were four feet high and curling around the upper cupboards. My entire library was just above, in the room in which I'd been working. Linda and Mike appeared from outside. I shouted at Linda to call 911 and at Mike to find some salt. I looked for the lid to the pot, but it was in a cupboard blocked by flames. I threw a Wedgwood dinner plate onto the pot, but it was too small and sank to the bottom. Pools of oil that had boiled over were also flaming on the stovetop. Mike was still looking for the salt. I grasped the handle of the pot, lifted it carefully off the stove, and lowered it to the kitchen floor, so that the stove wouldn't keep heating it and the flames couldn't reach the cupboards and the ceiling. Mike had found the salt and was now putting out the relatively small fires on the stovetop. He was only twelve. The pot was no longer boiling, but some oil had spilled on the floor and was also blazing. I could hear the siren of a fire truck. Mike passed me the salt, and I put out the floor fires then dumped the remaining salt into the pot. But it still burned. Then three firemen came running through the dining room with extinguishers and put out the fire and the few flickers of flame remaining on the stovetop. They were angry at me for having moved the pot and wanted to call me an ambulance. I must have been covered with soot. I had only a nickle-sized burn on the back of my right hand. I still have a faint scar. Sara came running in—she'd been at a neighbor's and seen the fire trucks come to our house. Linda was angry at me too. At first she said she'd called up the stairs 224

for me to watch the french-fry pot. Then she said I should have been downstairs anyway, because I knew she would be upset and forgetful when she'd just got news that her sister had died. Then she said I should have been more thoughtful and volunteered to cook for her. I think it's true that she had forgotten the pot because she was thinking about her sister. I remember thinking uncharitably that her damn family had almost screwed up our home again. But then our insurance more than covered the remaining kitchen renovations, and we worked happily at these together. The incident became only a story for entertaining guests, and in a short time not even a story at all. March 26, 2000 I woke up today again thinking about whether we should move Linda downstairs. It didn't seem like a great idea. I thought about the cramped downstairs bathrooms, particularly the one with a bathtub, a shabby room barely big enough to hold two people, located at the opposite end of the house from the room we would be giving Linda. I thought about how much Linda liked her bedroom, and how disorienting it would be for her to be relocated to a strange and rather barren room. And her bedroom's ensuite bathroom is spacious and clean. I decided I wouldn't let her be moved. Seizer did well at the show Friday and today. I got back to London around 5:15 and joined Mike in making last-minute preparations for John and Shirley and the Greek dinner they were bringing. Mike was just finishing icing a chocolate cake he had baked for his mom. I started preparing the dogs' dinner. Put a cloth and napkins on the table. Ran down to the cellar to get two bottles of 1995 Australian Shiraz. Linda came down at half-past five and sat expectantly at the table. I was washing wine glasses, and she began complaining incoherently that I hadn't done certain "stuff." I didn't have time to try to understand her, but I replied jokingly that I was doing important "stuff." I think she may have meant that there was no cutlery on the table yet. John and Shirley 225

arrived as I was washing the fourth glass—announced by a fusillade of Great Dane barks. Linda began eating her calamaraki as soon as they reached her plate, but she also began dropping every third or fourth one onto the floor. She would lean over and stare at it until John or Mike picked it for her and then eat it, oblivious to the possibility of dust or dog hair. She seemed content to ignore most of our conversation, although we tried to address comments to her. She would sometimes nod, or smile, or offer a few halting words. Occasionally she would say to one of us, "You need more stuff" and point to our plates or glasses, or to a serving dish she thought was being neglected. She was very concerned that John and Shirley get their share of the wine. When she wanted more wine or food herself, she would point with her fork and say "I want..." We talked a little bit about the impending visit of the woman from the Community Care Access Center—at the sound of the name, Linda glared and curled her lip. John asked Linda directly if she felt she needed help, and she replied "Maybe." John and Shirley and I managed to talk briefly while Linda went to the washroom. I mentioned that I was thinking of calling Linda's doctor, Kathleen McCully—that the nurse at the Cancer Center thought it was time that she became reinvolved with Linda. John agreed and suggested I call her right way. March 27, 2000 This morning, as I was waiting for the business day to start so I could call Dr. McCully, I realized that I hadn't yet checked Friday's mail. The April Dogs in Canada had arrived, and it contained the results of all the remaining unreported 1999 shows. I quickly went through it with a yellow highlighter, marking all the Great Dane Group wins and calculating their point value. I pulled out the February Great Dane Informer, which had the previous point totals and standings, and I added the new points. Seizer's uncle Jagger was going to be number one Canadian Dane for 1999, not Scott's Honey. In the final two months of the year Seizer had 226

won 278 points that Honey might otherwise have taken. Despite being shown at almost every available show for twelve months, Honey was only going to be number two, 140 points behind Jagger. For his five months of Canadian showing, Seizer was going to be number three. I ran to tell Linda that she had her revenge, but she wasn't awake yet. So I sent an e-mail message to Seizer's breeders, and to a couple of dog-show friends who like Seizer. Then it was time to call Dr. McCully's office. Dr. McCully called me back around noon. She had been receiving regular reports from the Cancer Center, and so she knew roughly how poorly Linda's treatment had gone. I told her that I wanted Linda's last days or weeks to be at home, or at least have her stay out of the hospital until she could no longer enjoy all the cigarettes, wine, roast duck, beef bourguignon, and video-taped TV that Mike and I could give her. She said that we would need help, and that she too would call the Community Care Access Center and request nursing and home care for Linda. Later, in the afternoon, I am sitting on Linda's bed. She tells me that she is feeling a little more "sensible." I can tell by her tone of voice that this isn't the precise word she'd like to use. Maybe she means "articulate," or "rational." She seems quiet and reflective. "Not doing good," she says, and she smiles and squeezes my hand. We sit together on her bed, holding hands, but we don't say much, although I have the sense that she feels capable of speaking. I wonder whether it really is time to arrange for home care. Someone from the Community Care Access Center calls an hour or so later. I think it's Pat Cartwright, the caseworker I spoke to almost a year ago, just after Linda's biopsy. I tell her that we want to look after Linda at home for as long as we can and have her transferred to St. Joseph's palliative care unit only when it becomes absolutely necessary. That at the moment Mike and I need help bathing Linda—getting her in and out of her shower, fixing her hair. She wonders if we need help daily, or just three or four times a week.

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March 28, 2000 I was cleaning up the hallway outside Linda's room early today, in preparation for the health worker's visit, when I glanced in at her and noticed that she was waking up, and that she was totally naked. She must have woken up earlier than usual and tried to dress herself. Or maybe she undressed herself last night and failed to get her pyjamas on. I can't tell. She's awake, but groggy. I go downstairs and get her decadron and ranitidine pills and bring them back up with a glass of water. She's holding her TV remote. She takes the pills from me and gets them into her mouth, but she ignores the glass of water and tries to drink instead from the remote. I gently take the remote from her, all the while talking to her in a lighthearted away—"Hey, you don't want to drink from that, darling. This would be much better, taste much much better ..."' Eventually I get the glass into her hand and she drinks from it. Then she decides she wants to get dressed. She takes her bra, which is still fastened from when she last took it off, and she contemplates what she can do with it. She decides to lie back and try to pull it up over her legs and hips. It jams at her hips, and she pulls and tugs for a while and then pulls it back down. I'm not sure whether she knows what she's doing. Maybe this is how she has been putting it on, although it seems unlikely. Now she's decided to pull it on over her head. She gets it onto her neck and then struggles to get it over one elbow, then the other. But when she gets this done, the cups are at the back, and her arms are under the wrong straps. She hasn't said a word during this struggle, perhaps not having the spare energy to speak. I say to her gently, "You know, darling, I think I could help," and she looks up at me expectantly. I gently slip her arms from under the straps, move the bra around her body so the cups are at the front, and ease her breasts into them. It seems an odd parody of something more joyful I did with her long ago. Then I slip her arms back under the straps. She winces when her right arm becomes cramped awkwardly. "There!" I say triumphantly when the bra's in 228

position. She sighs without smiling. I get a clean pair of underpants and slip them over her legs, and a loose-fitting pair of cotton jeans. Finally, I pull a similarly loose-fitting sweatshirt over her head and arms. She says nothing and collapses back into the pillows. Her face looks pained. The first personal-care worker, Jane, arrives a few minutes after four. She's a personable woman of about Linda's age. I take her upstairs. Linda has heard the dogs barking and has got up to meet us at the top of the stairs, or perhaps has come this far planning to come downstairs. I tell her that Jane has come to help her have a shower and to make sure she doesn't fall. She smiles patiently, as if struggling to be polite. I show Jane the bathroom, and where the towels are kept, and where she can find Linda's clean pyjamas and underpants and other kinds of clothing. Then I leave them together. About half an hour later Jane conies down and says everything has gone well, and that Linda seemed to enjoy being bathed. After letting her out and making sure the door is locked to prevent the dogs from getting out, I go upstairs and check on Linda. She's relaxing on her bed. "Did you enjoy your bath?" I ask. She nods grimly then smiles, as if trying to signal that she knows we are trying to do the best we can for her. At least that's how I want to understand her. March 30, 2000 About midmorning I received two phone calls. The first was from Michelle, who said she was one of Linda's personal-care workers and wanted to make sure it was okay for her to come Monday at 11:30.1 said that it was much more than okay, that we were looking forward to her coming. A few minutes later someone named Noella called—Linda's V.O.N. nurse. She wondered if she could drop by in half an hour. I said yes and went to Linda to let her know. She scowled and pulled her duvet up more tightly under her chin. Noella turned out to be a small, cheery woman in her late thirties. Noella Armstrong. She needed her cheeriness. I took her upstairs, as I had taken Jane. Linda stayed in bed, with little more than her eyes showing above her duvet, and she stared at Noella 229

without expression. Noella introduced herself and asked how she was. Linda said nothing. She asked if Linda knew why she was here. Linda looked blankly at her and then nodded slowly. She noticed Linda's bottles of sleeping pills on the TV stand beside her bed and asked her if she used them. Linda looked at her even more suspiciously. "Maybe," she said. "How many?" Noella asked. "I don't know," said Linda. "Do you take one, or two?" Noella tried again. Linda stared. "One," she said. Noella took Mike and I aside afterward and said earnestly that we seem to have no control over Linda's use of the sleeping pills—that Linda may take one and then, not remembering she's taken it, take another and even another. Mike and I replied that we'd seen no evidence that she does this, but we agreed that we can't be sure she isn't. I told Noella that I'd be worried that our taking control of the pills would annoy Linda—that it would be one more affront to her sense of independence. Noella sighed sympathetically and asked, "What's the alternative?" I thought about her questions and then said that we'd continue to leave the bottle there at her bedside, but we'd put only one pill in it and each day replace the pill if Linda's taken it. With luck, this will merely puzzle Linda, and she won't figure out that she's being supervised. Noella said this should be okay. I wrote to George, apologizing for not having written for a month, telling him that Linda was suddenly much worse, unable to dress herself, speak coherently, or walk without assistance. And that she's also reluctant to admit she can't do these things. That we have home-care help starting next week, for bathing and dressing. He writes back that we should also have it for cooking and cleaning—"We had that, and it was a goddamn blessing." March 31, 2000 This morning the one sleeping pill is still in its container. Linda seems to have slept without needing to take it. When I look in on her later she's still sleeping. I take her morning pills to her. She gets up and goes to the bathroom, still in the clothes I had 230

dressed her in on Thursday. I hear a crash. She has fallen while getting off the toilet, either unable to pull herself up, or stumbling because she forgot to pull her pants up from her ankles. She doesn't seem to want to get up. I stupidly call Sara to help me. But Linda doesn't want help. Tries to pull herself up by holding on to the plastic toilet seat. I tell her she can't, that it will break and she will fall. She persists, so I sit on the lid. I try again to assist her to get up. She shakes me off and crawls over to the clothes hamper, and, using it, she pulls herself to her knees. She then grabs a towel rail to pull herself up further. I again tell her not to do this, that the rail is too weak. I finally seize her firmly with my arms around her torso beneath her shoulders and pull her firmly to her feet. She's angry, but she allows me to pull her pants off so she can walk. They are wet, and there's water on the floor, although it doesn't appear to be urine. Sara has got a towel and is wiping it up. Linda allows us to steer her back to her bed. When we leave I notice Sara is shaking and close to tears. These crises have become so routine for me that I forget that Sara has never seen her mother this irrational and helpless. John phones on his cell phone from the Nihilist Spasm Band opening at the London Regional Historical and Art Museum. Sheila has just come up to him and asked if it's true that Linda has cancer. He's so startled that he says, "Yes, she has a brain tumor." Sheila says she's heard about Linda from James Reaney. Presumably this is the playwright's son, James Junior. John decides he should say no more, so he tells Sheila that if she wants more information she should phone me. But he's alarmed that she's found out, and he wants to warn me. He comes over a few hours later and sits with Linda, who seems pleased to see him. April 2, 2000 One of the five remaining gurami in Linda's aquarium is ill. It has lost much of its color and is now a translucent gray. Its long fins sag asymmetrically behind it. It swims with difficulty, its head higher than its tail, and it keeps to itself at the opposite end of the tank from the other four, 231

which school together as they usually do. It is one of the smaller and younger guramis in the tank. I tell Mike about it. He thinks it is dying but puts some medication into the tank in case that will help it. This may also keep the other guramis, he says, from catching whatever the illness is. Sara bakes a cake and leaves in the late afternoon for Toronto. She wants to be there for James's birthday. Noella returns to check on Linda. She teases her, saying, "How come you're being so cooperative. You're just humoring me, aren't you?" Linda smiles, pleased to have her independence recognized. I'm cooking roast duck tonight, with fresh asparagus. I fear it could be one of the last meals Linda is able to enjoy, so I decide to bring up the 1993 bottle of Chateau Margaux that Linda and I bought in Calais. It's not a bottle I'd want to drink alone or share with anyone but Linda. She seems as delighted as one could expect her to be when I tell her. She eats well and keeps saying "Good" throughout the meal. Around eleven o'clock I take her a cup of the tea Mike and I have made to drink while we watch the late news. She sets it down precariously on the mattress beside her. I warn her that it will spill but she says "No." Then it spills. I go to clean it up, but she waves me away. Maybe she thinks that if I don't clean it up it won't really have spilled. Mike comes, and we try to move her over from the spill, but she wants to stay close to the edge by the TV and keeps pulling the duvet under her, as if this will shield her from the wetness. April 3, 2000 I wish I had more time to record the things that are; happening, but there are so many that I am having trouble getting the shopping done, the VCR programmed, and my marking and class preparation done. Today I missed four hours of VCR programs on the upstairs machine, because Linda called for help during the half-hour period in which the tape had to be changed. When I finally rushed to change it I didn't notice that the machine hadn't automatically resumed recording like the; downstairs one 232

does when a tape runs out and has been replaced. Then I missed two hours more on the downstairs machine when Linda called me to help her with her own VCR and I forgot that I had been about to program it. Linda's new home-care assistant, Michelle, came today to help bathe and dress her. She's a jolly young woman who is nervous about dogs. She knows our friend Anne Stewart, the secretary of the Great Dane association—she dated her son a decade or so ago. I had Seizer in his crate when she arrived and had Stevie barricaded behind a child gate. She timidly went over to see Stevie, who was wagging his tail wildly, and she told me that every time she sees a dog she remembers being told that dogs can pick up a person's nervousness, and when she remembers that she becomes more nervous and is sure that the dog won't like her. I took her up to Linda, who lay under the covers glowering up at her, as she had at Noella on her first visit. Michelle cheerfully announced who she was and why she'd come and asked Linda if she thought this was a good idea. Linda surprised me by answering affirmatively, and in a full, slow, clearly modulated sentence. "I think it's very good," she said. I left the two of them together at this point, figuring that they had to get along on their own. Around midafternoon Linda's commode chair arrived. Mike and I put it beside her bed. She hasn't used it yet, but she seems happy that it is there. The day's biggest crisis for me was when she called me to help her with her VCR. She said she wanted it "off," so I turned the machine off. She said no. She wanted it on. So I turned it back on and started to leave. No, she wanted it off. So I experimented with turning the TV off. She said no and pounded the bed in good-humored frustration. She still seems able to step back and laugh at her disability. She took a deep breath and said carefully that she wanted it on but also wanted it off. She looked at me expectantly, as if she thought I might understand. I tried to decode what she said. I reviewed the various things she could want done with her VCR. I finally asked her if she wanted a new tape. "Yes," she said. What she evidently wanted was that I rewind the old tape, eject it, replace it 233

with a newly recorded tape, rewind it, and start it playing. But she has only one word for all of this—"off." After dinner—I made tacos, which Linda enjoyed tremendously, eating two large ones—I had a lot of difficulty getting Linda back up the stairs. She was breathing heavily from the strain and effort after only four stairs. Her feet were barely rising high enough to slide onto the next step and managing to get only part way on. At each step I wondered if she had enough of her foot on the next stair to be able to support herself without slipping off and backward. Worse, she kept resisting my help, digging her elbow into my chest and stomach in an effort to get me to let go of her— presumably unaware that it was only my support that was preventing her from plunging backward down the staircase. And it's a long, wide, high staircase. The main floor of our house has eleven-foot ceilings. April 4, 2000 Linda still loves chocolate chip almond ice cream. Tonight she was worried that our stock might be running out, but there a re still three tubs of it left from the half dozen that Sara bought two weekends ago. I nearly joked that she had a lifetime supply—something I might have said a year

agoOverall, I feel like I've had a bad day. Stayed up till 2 A.M. to write in this journal then got up at seven to take my van to the garage for an oil change and tune-up. Most of the morning I felt I was falling further and further behind on tasks I thought I would have completed a week ago. Got a few copies of the new Open Letter mailed—some of the more; important ones. Got both VCRs programmed, although not without finding out that I had mis-set one of them last night and missed another three hours of programs. Managed to half-prepare my class on Tom King's Medicine River. After that two-hour class I felt empty. I wandered at about two miles per hour across the campus, as if I had nowhere to go. In fact I should have been hurrying to the supermarket and figuring out what I could feed Linda for dinner. I eventually remembered that, and I went and bought some fresh 234

Atlantic salmon steaks and a package of frozen gourmet three-cheese scalloped potatoes. Got Mike to cook the steaks while I made a fresh dill hollandaise sauce for the salmon, heated the scalloped potatoes, cooked some snow peas, and decanted a chilled bottle of Alsatian Pinot Gris. This time I filled Linda's plate while Mike was helping her downstairs— giving her just slightly more of everything than I thought she would herself. She seemed pleased that she didn't have to struggle to serve herself and ate everything on her plate. This was the first I'd seen of her since giving pills to her at midmorning. Mike said she'd been groggy and taciturn during the visits of both the home-care worker and the nurse. Although he also wondered if she was trying to ignore them in the hope they might go away and not bother her. My impression of her today is that she is somewhat more alert and articulate than yesterday. But Mike says that she was significantly weaker in climbing the stairs. That if he had not been nudging and steadying her, she would not have been able to get her feet to the next step. He wonders how much longer she'll be able to manage the stairs—he thinks maybe only one or two more days. On the evening news there's a story about a study that has linked cellphone use and brain tumors. Mike and I both recall that Linda was an early cell-phone user, that she bought her first one—at our insistence—in 1990, shortly after we moved to London and she had to commute each weekend from and to her Toronto law practice. It was a big, cumbersome unit, bolted to the dashboard of her Camry, and with a large box of electronics bolted inside the trunk. She continued to use it for several years after she rolled the Camry on Highway 401 in 1993, during a hit-and-run collision with a small black truck near Woodstock—she then bought the Honda Accord she drove until recently. Mike wonders how good the old units were at shielding users from microradiation but comments that all that such radiation is known to do is increase one's odds of getting a tumor—there's never been a direct link established between microradiation and tumors. I think back to her Camry accident and recall that her 235

only injury was a small cut on the top of her head; she had the police drive her to the train station and managed to get to Toronto and appear in court that afternoon. Could the blow to her head have caused the tumor? Or was it already growing from some other cause, possibly her cell phone? April 5, 2000 Stopped on my way home from teaching to buy Linda a carton of cigarettes. She had only one full package left yesterday morning and still hasn't opened it. I wonder if I'll ever be buying another carton. She's also slowed down in her watching of video tapes. I may have to buy more if I am to keep up with her taping schedule, although I suppose that doesn't make much sense. I haven't talked to her yet today. She was asleep when I left for the university, at 8:30, and she's asleep now, at 2:30. Mike spoke with her just before noon, when the home-care worker was here to bathe and dress her. She said she hadn't slept well last night, although she also didn't seem to have watched any video tapes. I wonder if she can remember sleeping, or if she just lay in a half-asleep, half-awake confused state. She complained several times last evening about various sounds— about me talking on the telephone in the next room, about the bubbling sounds of her aquarium, about footsteps in the hall outside her room. She groaned in protest when I walked up the stairs, which are deeply carpeted, around midnight. This is new. Mike wonders if the tumor has suddenly made her hearing specially acute. April 8, 20oo Spoke briefly to the V.O.N. nurse yesterday, talking mostly about Linda's difficulties in getting back up the staircase after dinner. She said that leg weakness is one of the side effects of high dosages of decadron. That seemed odd to me—I would have thought muscles generally would have been affected—but it hardly seemed like a distinction worth suggesting. However, I told the nurse, Linda has been more articulate for the last two days, although more unpredictable in her sleeping patterns. She's 236

come out with several complete sentences, like she did last night when, without telling her, I went out to give a brief poetry reading to help launch the new London Arts Center in the recently built market. "You should have told me," she said. Of course there were no nouns in that sentence, and at dinner a few hours before she had several times called Mike "Frank," although she had hesitated each time, as if she knew she might be making a mistake. She wanted him to eat more food, and she would say "Frank" and then point at his empty plate and at the pieces of chicken still on the serving plate. I felt badly about not having told her about the reading. I realize I'm hardly telling her about any of the things I do now. She has nothing to say about them and often doesn't appear to understand. I buy a new teapot, I order new wines from Vintages, I take part in appointments-committee interviews and meetings at the university, and I mention none of these things to her. Seizer's certificate for his number three Canadian national ranking arrived yesterday, and when I told her she had difficulty comprehending what it was for. She seemed to confuse it with a health certificate, perhaps the one certifying that his hips are "excellent." She kept saying "strong," which I couldn't decode. I'm writing this in a Red Roof Inn near Pittsburgh. I drove here yesterday afternoon so Seizer could be shown today and tomorrow at the Western Pennsylvania Great Dane specialties. I did manage to make sure that Linda knew where we were going and that we'd be back Sunday night. I don't know what she thinks about it—I suspect she's too preoccupied with her illness to care one way or another. She didn't complain, didn't wish us luck, just seemed to want to establish what day it was now and what day we'd be coming back. I phoned last night to let her and Mike and Sara know that we'd arrived safely. I called Sara's cell phone— she's visiting for the weekend again—because often Mike is too busy with Linda to hear his phone, which is in the back of the house. Sara reported that Linda was happy to have her meals in her room now and not to have to negotiate the stairs. They took our Victorian loo table and four balloon237

back chairs up to her room, but she preferred to be served in bed. Not a great idea, since Linda has never bought more than the one set of sheets for her bed. I reminded Sara that the low wooden feeding table we used for Soren and Sigmund, which we currently use as a plant stand in our plant room, is actually an invalid's bed table and could be put back into use as one.

My high anxiety level subsided as soon as I left our driveway yesterday. It was as if all the tasks I have yet to do at home vanished as soon as it was impossible for me to do them. At home I'm constantly worrying about which task I should be doing currently, and if I'm not interrupted during one of them by Linda or the dogs, I interrupt myself. I'll be trying to mark an essay when I think I could also be doing laundry, so I put down the essay and start a load of wash. While loading the washer I'll remember that there's a lightbulb to be changed in the back kitchen, and so I'll do that before going back to marking. I'll be partway through the next essay when I'll remember that I meant to defrost meat for supper, so I'll rush to the freezer to get it out. Then I'll think I'm becoming too harried to be marking well, and that I should go and read my e-mail instead. I go to my computer and remember a letter of reference I should have written last week, and so I do that. On my way to get a stamp for the envelope, I think I'd better program the afternoon VCR programs for Linda before I forget. So I stop and do that. Then I can't remember where I've put the envelope I was carrying and waste ten minutes looking for it. All of this keeps me away from Linda. At the end of a day I realize I've hardly seen her except at dinnertime or when taking her pills to her or when answering one of her calls for help with her VCR. Each time I try to sit quietly with her on her bed I find myself tormented by things I need to do in the next half hour, the next few hours, the next few days. My normal pulse rate now seems to be over a hundred. But not since I left on this show trip. There were thunderstorms and torrential rains between Erie and Pittsburgh, but I felt relaxed and relatively happy. As I type this the dog show has already started—puppy sweepstakes, 238

an "unofficial class," from nine to eleven this morning. As an American champion, Seizer's not scheduled to be shown until around two. On other occasions I'd be anxious about finding my way to the show site, about fourteen miles away, or about meeting Seizer's new handler, or about how well he will show. Maybe I'm feeling good because it's such a big show, with so many outstanding dogs. There's no pressure to win because there can be no shame in losing. Last night, after getting my things into the motel, I stood at the window and looked over the parking lot and adjacent woods. I remembered the first time I had come to a U.S. dog show. Linda had organized the trip. We stayed in a motel in Rochester, walked the dogs together, and ate together in a nearby restaurant. It was the first time Soren and Sigmund had ridden in an elevator. They were very surprised and perplexed by where they seemed to be each time the door opened. If Linda were here, we'd walk over to the Denny's restaurant across the parking lot for dinner. Instead, I heat a can of chili for myself on my oneburner butane stove. But of course it was Soren she liked taking to dog shows. As his arthritis had worsened, she showed him no more than once a year, doping him with anti-inflammatories before the show. She never came to a show with me unless she was showing him. Seizer was supposed to be her new fawn dog. She initiated his purchase and took him to his first handling classes. But when Siggie died, in the middle of a show season, I transferred all of his uncancelable show entries to Seizer. Many of these were at shows seven hundred miles away, to which she was uninterested in driving. When Seizer came back from two weeks of such shows (with ten Best Puppy in Group awards and five Best Puppy in Show ones), he believed he was my dog, and Linda began carping about his moody temperament, preferring to give her time to little Stevie. The last three shows she attended with me were shows, like the August specialties, where she wanted Stevie to be shown.

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April 9, 2000 There are trees bursting into leaf and flower all around Pittsburgh, but the weather became unseasonably cold yesterday after the thunderstorms. We had some snow last night. I had a good time at the dog show. As I expected, Seizer didn't come close to winning, but he looked okay in the ring, and several people admired him. I have more friends at this show than I have at most Canadian shows. Of course, there are more than a hundred Danes here—more than at any Canadian show. I tell several of my friends details of Linda's illness. There's no point keeping it a secret now from anyone—Linda's past being aware that people know. I spend most of my tune with Cheryl Magnotta, who likes Seizer ;ilmost as much as I do, and who is here with two young brindles—a dog and a puppy bitch. Dogs seem to be almost all of Cheryl's life. I've never told her about the books I've written and the papers and readings I've presented at international conferences. Maybe she has secrets from me too. After the show I phone home, again to Sara's cell phone. Sara thinks her mother is much worse. She says that she prefers eating with her hands and can speak only in single words and gestures. Of course, Sara is comparing her with how she was last weekend—she's probably not "much worse" than she was yesterday. Sara and Mike tried using the bed table for Linda's dinner, but she still ended up with beef—they had cooked a beef bourguignon—and chocolate ice cream all over herself and her bedding. Sara wonders whether the table was of any help. But Sara's also somewhat excited about having been to the opening of the monthly Vintages wine release this morning. She bought herself a couple of good, inexpensive French whites, a highly rated Australian Merlot, and a Chateau Musar. I'm glad to hear that there's still room for pleasure and excitement in her life, despite Linda's apparent worsening. We talk about Linda's appointment with Dr. Macdonald on Monday morning, and the difficulties we may have getting her there and back, particularly negotiating the staircase to her room. We decide to use one of the Cancer Center wheelchairs in the center itself. Sara thinks we'll do 240

okay—that Mike could probably piggyback his mother back up the staircase. I doubt this, but I don't say anything. Mike and I have been told that the local ambulance service would come, free of charge, to assist us with the stairs if we needed help. This morning I was awakened by a phone call from Cheryl, who is also staying at the Red Roof, asking for help loading one of her dog crates into her van. I had helped her unload it last night. I pretended I was already up, pulled on my clothes, and hurried over. Her dogs have to be in the ring early today, whereas Seizer doesn't have to show again until around 4 P.M. I'm planning to have a leisurely morning. April 10, 2000 We've just got back from the Cancer Center. Had a harrowing time getting Linda there and getting her back. When we went to wake and dress her, she kept hiding under the covers, either not understanding that she had an appointment with Dr. Macdonald or not wanting to understand. We couldn't get her even to sit up. Finally I had to tear her duvet out of her hands so that she would welcome the warmth of the clothes Sara and I were putting on her. "What are you doing?" she kept asking. "Why?" At one point she began screaming "Ahhhhhhhh," as if she hoped that would dissuade us. Once we had her dressed and were trying to get her to her feet, she suddenly began cooperating, and with an effort she sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. She then tried to wave us off and stand up on her own, teetering precariously. We kept hold of her anyway, with Mike—who had been staying in the hallway while we dressed her— steering her gently towards the head of the stairs. Once there, she began yelling "Let go" and acting as if she would walk down on her own. We were so alarmed that we decided going down the stairs was too big a risk. We told Linda she didn't have to go, that she could go back to bed. This seemed to make her more angry. "No," she shouted, "I'm going!" She leaned against the stairway wall rather than holding onto the bannister, as we were urging her to do, and she launched herself down, stepping from 241

one stair to another rather than bringing both feet to a stair before trying the next. I walked backwards in front of her, keeping both hands on her waist, and Mike tried to walk beside her, holding onto her shoulders. "Let go. You're no good," she kept saying, but we persisted in ignoring her. We could feel how weak her body was. Her knees and waist seemed ready to crumple at each step. We were all out of breath when we reached the bottom, but we had to keep on—pulling Linda into her fur coat, supporting her like an unsteady drunk down the sidewalk to where we had parked her Honda. Mike stayed behind to wash Linda's sheets and towels. I drove the Honda to the center and dropped Sara at the front door to locate: a wheelchair. We slowly got Linda out of the car and into the wheelchair, with which we all three were unfamiliar, nearly forgetting to fold up the footrests so Linda could step back into it. I then drove off to park, leaving Sara to wheel Linda into the center. By the time I parked she had checked Linda in and taken her into the numbered waiting line at the hematology lab. When we came out of the lab Rose intercepted us, suggesting that Linda might prefer to lie down in the stretcher ward while waiting for Dr. Macdonald. Linda agreed. A few minutes after we had Linda settled on her side on a stretcher and covered with a blanket, Rose came to us, but rather than speaking to Linda, as she usually did, she took Sara and me into a nearby room and asked us how Linda had been. We recounted our struggle to get Linda dressed and over to the center; Rose commented admiringly on Linda's continuing assertions of independence. Sara described how Linda had shown the first signs of incontinence on the weekend. She was not realizing she had to urinate until it was almost too late, until her panties were wet, and then she would scramble across her bed to the commode. Sara and Mike had also noticed that she hadn't had a bowel movement in several days—maybe five. We probably all should have noticed that she was no longer sufficiently aware of herself to be taking the laxative Dr. Macdonald had prescribed for her. Sara had told me about all these new elimination problems last night, 242

when I got back from Pittsburgh. I had called the Community Care Center at nine this morning and tried to report them to Linda's case manager, but I had to leave a message with her assistant. If Linda's becoming incontinent, she's going to need more home care and a supply of diapers. The case manager had called me back just as Mike and I had Linda balanced on the second-to-last step on her way down the stairs to go to the Cancer Center. At the end of our very rushed conversation she said that she would make sure that Noella, our V.O.N. nurse, visited sometime this afternoon. When Rose was finished talking to us, she appeared about to leave. I suggested that she also talk to Linda. She went over to her stretcher and bent over—"How are you doing?" she asked. "I'm doing well," Linda replied, without turning her head to look at her. Dr. Macdonald arrived a few minutes later and began checking her vision, reflexes, and cognition. He had some difficulty getting her to lie on her back so he could test her leg strength. He later held up a pen and asked her what it was. "A pencil," she replied. He held up a key and asked her what it was. She stared and shook her head. "Is it a glass?" he asked. She again shook her head. "Chips," she said. He put some of his instruments away and then spoke slowly to the three of us. He said that the last round of chemotherapy did not seem to have resulted in much improvement. Linda groaned and scowled at his understatement. He did not recommend that we continue with it. Tumors, he said, tend to adapt to chemotherapy in general each time they are exposed to a new agent, and thus they become increasingly resistant even to agents they haven't yet been given. There are a number of other chemotherapies that could be given to Linda, but for each there is only a very small chance that they would be effective and a high probability that they would have severe and painful side effects. He couldn't recommend these either. He thought it best that he and the other doctors work now at keeping Linda comfortable—that her general well-being during the next three months should be the greatest concern. I found myself admiring how adroitly he was masking the bad news, at how he was making disaster seem 243

like an opportunity for kindness. Of course, the fact thai: all of us, especially Linda, had already figured out that the end of the treatment line was here, that her tumor had become much too advanced for even a miracle cure, helped make what he was saying seem reasonable, even predictable. We were all three reading past his euphemisms, understanding them for the social codes they were. "Have you been in touch with the Parkwood Palliative Care Unit?" he inquired. "Has your family doctor been to visit you?" I asked him about her decadron dosage and what the maximum dosage was—could it be increased again? He said that he couldn't recommend that either, since the positive effects of the last redoubling of it had been short-lasting, and the potential side effects of a further one severe. He began saying goodbye to Linda, telling her that lie would continue to monitor her case, and he'd be available by telephone. I slipped away towards the door of the ward, taking advantage of Linda's limited vision, and I was able to intercept him there as he left. "Did you have: other questions?" he asked. I asked whether, when he had mentioned three months, he was indicating a likely or outside expectation. He sighed and said that he thought that Linda most likely had between two weeks and a month, if her tumor continued to grow at its present rate. I commented that it was important for us to know, since the Parkwood unit claimed to limit patients to a maximum one-month stay. How could we know when Linda had less than a month left? He said that this was only a policy and that in actuality Parkwood would not discharge a dying patient. Most of its patients did not last a month, but a few stayed longer. He said that Linda would begin sleeping more as the tumor overwhelmed both her brain and the decadron. Eventually she would be unable to swallow the decadron, and without it she would rapidly decline. I asked whether it could be given intravenously. He said it could, but that once she was so lacking in awareness that she could not accept pills there would be little point in forcing her to remain alive. He would not want to be kept alive in such a condition, and he didn't think I would. I commented, somewhat aggressively, I suspect, that I 244

hoped that better therapies for such tumors would be discovered soon— that as both a researcher and a physician he must be dismayed at how ineffective Linda's treatments had been. I wondered to myself how many families had the guts to make such a complaint, although I also felt a little guilty about doing it, because he'd always been so kind. Dr. Macdonald nodded in agreement but added that his treatments had given her some temporary benefit—they had given her a few months in which she could enjoy an almost-normal life. I thought back to the hopeful tones in which he had presented the first chemotherapy—but of course his hopeful tones hadn't been promises. They had probably merely been part of the therapy, designed to give Linda enough optimism that her body would also fight the tumor. Or so I suspected, but I didn't ask. I like Dr. Macdonald. I'm sure he must have to watch far too many of his patients die. After he leaves, the ward nurse asks us if we want to call an ambulance crew to take Linda home and back up the stairs. She says it won't take long to get one and that Community Care will pay for it. It's 11:30. We've only been waiting ten minutes when Linda gets restless and demands to be let out of the stretcher. She wants to go home now. Showing unexpected strength, she tries to scramble over the rails that have been drawn up on the side of the stretcher. The nurse comes running to lower the rails and help her into the wheelchair. Sara decides to wheel the chair around the center, and perhaps even outside, in the hope that this will distract her and help her calm down. Every few minutes Linda shouts incoherently: "God damn!" "No way!" "Want out!" When Sara brings her back to the stretcher ward, fifteen minutes later, she is a little calmer. She slumps in the chair as if trying to pass the time through intense meditation. An hour passes. The ward nurse tells us that Linda is at the top of the dispatch list and that her ambulance should arrive any minute. Half an hour more passes. Linda wakes and curses softly. I remember that she still hasn't had any decadron pills today—that in the stress of getting her dressed and down the stairs we forgot them. Sara tells the nurse, who goes in search of some. She comes back and tells us that the requisition for the pills has 245

been filled out and will have to be signed by Dr. Macdonald and by the head nurse. Ten more minutes pass. Every wheeled vehicle that comes into view—whether it's a walker, a coffee cart, or a wheelchair—begins to look to me like it might be an ambulance stretcher. Linda is now groaning steadily. I decide that the stress of waiting may be worse than the stress of trying to carry her up the stairs, and I tell Sara that if the ambulance hasn't come by 1:30 we will take her home ourselves. At 1:25 I get up to fetch the Honda from the parking lot. Linda's decadron hasn't arrived either. Suddenly Linda's stretcher and ambulance crew come into view at the far end of the corridor. Once she's back in her own bed, Linda falls asleep almost as soon as we finish helping her take her decadron. About an hour later Noella calls. I explain the new symptoms of incontinence and constipation. She arrives a few minutes later with napkins and spends some time with Linda. She gives Linda a suppository and manages to obtain a small movement. She suggests that we give her two laxative tablets later tonight, and then one every other day. After she leaves I go to Linda's computer and try to deal with her e-mail. Since I last read and deleted her mail on Thursday, 857 new messages have accumulated. It takes me an hour to scan them, save two or three informative ones, and delete the rest. After answering some of my own e-mail I go out and buy some duck for Linda. She's had a terrible day so far and deserves a good supper. Besides, I'm not sure how much longer she can enjoy good food. I prepare a little pasta and some snow peas to go with it—all things she can eat with her fingers—and I cut her duck up into little pieces, as if for a child, before serving it. I let her pick between two wines that were released by Vintages this weekend—a Fife 1997 Zinfandel, which was awarded ninety-one out of a possible one hundred points by the Wine Spectator, and a 1993 Chateau Musar from Lebanon. She points to the latter. She eats very well—the entire half duck and most of the pasta and peas that I served her. Then she lies back, smiling, sipping her wine. "Mark is gorgeous, is status . . . feudal, 246

whatever," she says. I nod, wondering if perhaps "mark" has something to do with duck. She used to make jokes about how ducks don't say "quackquack," they say "mark-mark," as if telling a teacher like me to get his marking done. Perhaps she meant that the duck was delicious. Maybe I misheard "feudal"—perhaps she was saying it was "futile" to try to talk. Then she appears to want more wine. "Come on," she says. "Time is ... time is ..." Perhaps she is saying something profound. "Time is ..." sounds a bit like a line from Eliot's "The Hollow Men." I jump up and fill her glass. Mike comes in with her evening decadron pill and a glass of water. When the wine is gone she begins raising her right hand to her mouth, as if there were a cigarette in it. She does this several times, looks for her lighter, and then lights it. She seems puzzled that lighting it has not made anything happen. She again raises her right hand to her lips. Then she lights the lighter, still looking puzzled. Finally she puts it down and falls asleep. April n, 2000 Strange programs blared from Linda's television all night. She fell asleep with the VCR turned off around 8 P.M. Mike and I tried to wake her for her decadron at ten, and then again at eleven, but without success. We tried again when I went to bed at one, and Mike apparently tried again around four. When I get up at seven she is still sleeping. I get the dogs up and feed them, make coffee, and then look at the pill containers. Her last pill for yesterday is still there, so I take a double dose and a glass of water upstairs. She doesn't open her eyes when I speak to her. But she does groan and move around in the bed. "Here are your pills," I say in an excited voice, trying to cajole her. She pulls the duvet over her head. "What do you think about taking your pills?" I ask. "Do you think it's a good idea?" "Why?" she replies. An hour goes by. She's slightly more awake. By talking to her and touching her hands with a glass of ice water I get her semiconscious, but 247

she's still uncomprehending. She keeps mumbling "Why?" "How about I put them in your mouth for you?" I ask. She groans again and asks why. I try to put them in her mouth. She turns her head. I try again, and she bites my finger hard then spits out the two pills I have managed to get in. I wonder if she is trying to avoid any more treatment. I wonder if she wants to die.

She then drifts back to sleep. I keep remembering what Dr. Macdonald told me yesterday about how, when Linda is too sleepy to be able to accept her decadron, she will soon lapse into a coma and be dead within days. By 10:30 I've managed to get her semiconscious by sitting on the bed and talking to her and smiling at her. I call up the back stairs to Mike and ask him to have a try with the pills. I go downstairs and try to read the paper. About half an hour later he comes back and reports success. He also had to put them into her mouth himself, but this time she drank from the cup of water and swallowed them. And he managed to give her the two laxative pills the nurse had recommended. I wonder why she would accept the pills from him but not from me. A little later Michelle arrives to give Linda her morning bath. I have to go to the university for my office hour. I leave Michelle sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to get Linda to look at her and talk to her. She's trying to get her interested in a cigarette. When I get back home Mike is doing laundry. Michelle had managed to get Linda to sit up and then discovered that she had urinated during the night, saturating the duvet, the sheets, the mattress pad, and wetting the mattress. She and Mike had taken off the bedding, put towels on the mattress, then jumped up and down on them to make them absorb the moisture. I ask Mike what I should cook for supper. I need a quick supper because I have to go back to the university at 6:30 to invigilate a final exam. Mike suggests steak, so I grill a steak for Linda, cut it up, and serve it with whole baby carrots, buttered and peppered, and home-fried potato cakes. Linda seems to enjoy the food, and the modest Bordeaux I serve with it. She keeps raising her glass and saying "Good." 248

When I get to the university the two colleagues who also teach sections of the course ask why I look so harried. I tell them about Linda. They are shocked. I tell them about Linda's former desire for secrecy and about how the news of her illness has been leaking out—not that she can possibly care. They generously suggest that I go home as soon as my students are settled—they will collect the papers for me and leave them in my mailbox. I get back around 8:30, and I find Mike at the computer in Linda's study, beside her bedroom. He logs himself off so I can look at some e-mail. There's a strange smell in the room. I ask him about it and he says he thinks it must be rotting snails, which he had removed from Linda's aquarium and dumped in her garbage can. I comment that it's a good thing it is garbage night, and that we will be putting the garbage out shortly for collection. After looking at my mail I go to give Linda her evening pills. I turn on the light in the hall outside her room. She is sitting on her prize, deep-red Bidijar Persian carpet just inside the doorway. There's a large mound of soft excrement on the carpet beside her, and some smears across the carpet and onto the floor. She's wiping at her self with a small piece of badly soiled toilet paper. There are large smears of feces on her legs, her nightgown, her arms, her face, in her hair. She looks up at me perplexedly. I tell her that we'll look after her and go back out into the hall and call for Mike. Neither of us really knows what to do first. We have to get her up, but we also have to try not to spread the feces further. Mike suggests we get a bucket so she can at least wash her hands before trying to hold onto us as we get her to her feet. But the feces are dried onto her hands—God knows how long she has been sitting here. I ask her if she would like to wash her hands, and she nods. Mike runs and brings me a bucket, while I gently pull her nightgown up and over her head and arms. I get some warm water into the bucket; she dips her hands in and begins slowly washing them—they're covered perhaps a quarter-inch deep. Every few seconds she brings a hand towards her face and studies it, as if it is something amazing. I replace the water, which has quickly turned brown, and 249

then I get an old green towel from her bathroom, soak one end of it, and begin helping her scrub at her hands. Meanwhile, Mike has brought in some grocery bags, paper towels, and a dustpan, and he's begun trying to scoop up the thick pool of excrement on the rug and gather it into the grocery bags. When her hands are almost clean I run and rinse the towel in her hand basin. I bring it back and begin trying to remove the larger smear on her thighs and buttocks. "Would you like to have a shower?" I ask her. "Yes," she says very softly. I turn the shower on and then try to help her to her feet, but she has no strength at all in her legs. I get Mike to lift her upright, and we slowly steer her into the shower stall. We can't let her sit on the shower stall seat until I have thoroughly wiped and rinsed her backside. It seems like every time I use a new facecloth to wipe her behind or crotch it comes out caked with brown. I pile the soiled cloths in the far corner of the stall, until finally one comes out relatively clean. Meanwhile, she clings to my shoulders. I am, of course, both fully dressed and fully in the shower with her. Mike helps me turn her around and seat her. I leave her there and run to get some Dial soap from the other bathroom, and with yet another clean facecloth I begin lathering her all over, then rinsing. I ask her if she'd like her hair washed, and she again nods. I find some Johnson's baby shampoo on a shelf in the shower, and I lather and wash her hair slowly. She seems very patient and composed throughout, although I also wonder if she is somewhat in shock. I begin drying her while she's still sitting on the shower seat. Then I have to wash and dry the bathroom floor, which has wet brown footprints from the doorway to the stall. Mike has brought yet more towels—brightly colored ones that I'd bought in a box lot at an estate auction some months ago for bathing the dogs. He now has the floor relatively clean and has folded up the rug, but we still have to strip the bed of its sheet and flounce, which are also badly smeared. Luckily her duvet and cover are untouched. Linda shivers while she waits, despite the dry towel I have put over her shoulders. Finally, Mike gets a clean sheet on the bed and we are able to get her to her feet and slowly steer her to it. When we 250

get there we realize that she can't get onto it while facing it. She stares at the bed as if it presents an insoluble problem. I joke to her, "Would you like to dive onto the bed—make a big belly flop?" She smiles. "Or would you like to turn around and sit on it?" "Turn around," she says. She doesn't move, however, seemingly flummoxed by how to go about turning. We slowly move her to her right until she is facing away from the bed, then we help her sit. She falls over onto the bed almost instantly. We realize at once that she is too far down the bed. We should have positioned her higher up. We have to bring the pillows down almost to the middle in order to prop her up and give her water and her decadron. With difficulty I pry up her behind and put a large Depends napkin on her. She tries to help, and after I've got it on she tries to pull it up further and motions that I should tighten the adhesive fasteners. A couple of minutes later she is asleep. Mike asks what we should do with the carpet. It's an inch-thick, five-foot-seven, finely knotted, semiantique Bidijar she found at an auction in Toronto in 1990; she bid six thousand dollars to acquire it—one of those extraordinarily beautiful and exotic things she always believed she was entitled to have. I tell Mike to take it outside, hang it on the fence, and hose it thoroughly with the garden hose, while I start the laundry. Mike says the laundry will have to be disinfected with bleach, which we've run out of. So I drive to a twenty-four-hour supermarket and buy bleach and laundry soap, come back, load the sheet, the flounce, and the white towels and cloths into the washer. Mike and I are up until 1:30 doing three urgent loads of laundry. April 13, 2000 Monday's visit to the Cancer Center clearly exhausted Linda. Mike now wonders whether hearing Dr. Macdonald tell us that he had no further treatments to offer also demoralized her. That and last night's traumatic accident. I remind him how cynically Linda often spoke about the various chemotherapies and about how little they were doing for her. Mike replies that hopeful people use cynicism to protect themselves from having too 251

much hope. Yesterday she was very quiet. She woke up when Pat arrived from home care to bathe her, and she went back to sleep almost immediately. She didn't turn on her VCR all day. She smoked no more than one or two cigarettes. When John and Shirley arrived with dinner for us all at around six she groaned and covered her head as if she wished we would go away. "Jeezus," she kept saying. Mike and I set four places at the loo table in her room. I opened two bottles of wine—a Julienas that Linda has enjoyed and a 1979 Chambertin that David Dolson brought for her on his last visit. It seemed only fair that she get to taste it. I wondered how many more days she'd be able to. When she smelled the food and saw the wine she slowly shuffled her shoulders up the bed towards the headboard. She ate almost all of the substantial helping of chicken and broccoli that Shirley gave her and, although drinking the wine slowly, she kept motioning for more. She appeared to be listening to our conversation, although it was difficult, if not impossible, for us to include her in it. When John asked me how Seizer had done at the Pennsylvania dog show, Linda groaned dramatically, as if not wanting us to talk about that. She smiled with relief when we began gathering up the dishes and preparing to leave her. She fell asleep quickly. Mike and I could not wake her for her lateevening decadron. This morning I go to her at nine with two decadrons, worried that if she does not get some soon she may never wake again. I manage to get her to open her eyes and talk. "Jeezus," sne says and pulls the covers over her head. I kid her about hiding from me. "Oh fuck!" she ssys. "Jeezus God almighty!" I keep on talking to her. "Would you like to have your pills now? Do you think that would be a good idea?" She says nothing. "Would you like a cigarette? I ask. "No," she says quietly. "Go to sleep." I keep talking to her until about a quarter to ten, sometimes asking if she'd like me to go away and saying I will go away once she takes her pills. Then Mike looks in—unluckily for him—and I ask him if he'll take over. She really does have a different relationship with him than with me, and 252

sometimes she seems to refuse to do things simply because it's me who's asked. I decide to go out and buy milk and some other supplies. When I get back Michelle is here from home care. Mike tells me that she's just managed to get Linda to take her pills. Michelle comes out of the room and says that sometimes patients feel they have to be polite and cooperative with her—that social conventions make them cooperative with strangers but not with their families. She starts down the stairs to go. I ask if she's changed Linda's napkin. She hasn't, so she comes back and changes and washes her. Linda goes to sleep again almost immediately. After Michelle goes I change the tapes in both the VCRs on which I've been recording Linda's programs. It seems stupid to be doing this. There are now eighteen newly recorded cassettes piled beside Linda's TV set, and another four waiting for her downstairs. I've been running out of cassettes, and I have had to buy new ones and bring others out of storage and check to make sure they are okay. Several are not. I wonder whether my keeping up the recording is a kind of sympathetic magic—that if I stop recording I'll be admitting that the end is virtually here. I encounter Mike in the hall. I comment that we're very close to forcing decadron upon a passive, semiconscious Linda, and it's much like the intravenous feeding of decadron that Dr. Macdonald believes unethical. Mike agrees. He doesn't think we'll be able to go on like this much longer. I feel upset, but I don't want Mike to see. While I was driving back from the store through the spring sunlight, the daffodils had reminded me of driving with Linda through the Yorkshire Dales, and, in another year, driving with her in the Loire Valley, down country roads lined with wild iris blooms. I pace back and forth in the hallway. Linda sleeps, or seems to sleep, until I check on her around 3 P.M. Her eyes are open, fixed on the blank TV screen. I try to get her to talk, without success. I put a hand on her shoulder, thinking to comfort her, and she reaches up and knocks it off. Mike checks on her a half-hour later and persuades her to take more pills. He also talks her into watching some television and smoking a cigarette. He suggests I take her some chocolate 253

eclairs in a few minutes—he's taken them out of the freezer to thaw. When I take them up I find him holding Linda upright beside the commode chair. But she doesn't want to sit on it. He says he found her scrambling across the bed trying to get out. I notice that she's taken off her napkin, and Mike points out that it is soaked. That's probably why she doesn't need to use the commode. I tell him that we need to get another napkin on her before we let her lie down, and he says we'll need to wash her first. I go to get a facecloth and warm water. She begins yelling "Why, why, why?" I come back and wash her and try to dry her—she keeps trying to dry herself with the tail of her nightgown. We manage to get the new napkin on her and settle her back on her pillows, but then she tries to remove the napkin. I tell her sharply that she's not allowed to and manage to push it back onto her hips. Mike changes the program on the VCR and tries to distract her with it. I pull the covers over her so it's more difficult to reach the napkin, and then I bring her in the plate of eclairs. Her eyes light up, and she starts eating them at once. Mike is worried about her becoming dehydrated. All she is drinking is a few sips of water with her pills, her wine at dinner, and whatever liquid is in her chocolate ice cream. The wine and the chocolate will be acting more as diuretics, he fears. He wants me to phone the V.O.N. nurse and report how sleepy she's been today and how difficult it's becoming to get her to accept liquids or pills. I leave a message for the nurse with her assistant, but I indicate that it's not urgent. I don't think what I have to report is urgent, but I'm actually not sure. It's now half-past seven. I went out and bought Greek takeout food from the Mykonos restaurant. Linda still loves calamaraki. She was grumpily lying in bed when I brought her some, but she eagerly raised herself up to eat as soon as she sniffed them. Mike is asleep, exhausted from staying up most of last night in the hope of giving his mom her midnight decadron. She didn't eat a lot—about half the salad and two-thirds of the calamaraki—but Mykonos sells large servings. I bought myself some pork souvlaki in a pita and two dolmathaki. I also bought Linda a large 254

baklava and cut it up into small pieces. She ate the whole thing, all the while making gestures of appreciation. I gave her a very nice 1997 Barbera d'Asti—one of the best years ever for this wine. She indicated that she enjoyed it, but she drank only two small glasses. She said she wanted to sleep, and she's now asleep too. April 14, 2000 Wake up this morning before seven, dreading having to check on Linda and finding out whether she can be woken. She's asleep, but breathing regularly. I shower, make coffee, bake myself a baguette, and prepare a few things for the day ahead. At 8:30 I look in on Linda again. She has rolled over. Her eyes are open. I sit and talk to her. I tell her she is looking pretty good this morning. She glares. I ask her if she'd like to have her pills now or wait till later. She asks "Why?" I tell her that Sara is coming today, and that she'll want to be bright and alert for her. "Today?" she asks. I again ask if she'd like her pills. "No," she says. She pulls the duvet up over her head. I tell her that she's hiding from me. "Yes," she says. I go downstairs and tell Mike I am leaving, but that his mother seems a little better than yesterday. He'll probably have some success eventually with her pills. When I get back home I find that Mike has indeed been successful in giving her the pills. She had been soaking wet and wanted Mike to change her napkin, which he did. Sara has e-mailed me—she'll be arriving at 8:30. Linda seems a little more alert. She eats some French toast Mike makes for her. She watches some TV. April 15, 200o Sara arrived yesterday on an earlier train. We picked up some Chinese food on our way from the station and ate together in Linda's room. Mike has rearranged Linda's decadron schedule so that she gets her third pill of the day at around 5 P.M. and can have her fourth right after dinner, before she falls asleep. This will tend to compress the pills' effects into a shorter 255

time frame, but it may make it slightly easier to wake her in the morning and get her to take her first pill. Noella believes so. She was here late yesterday afternoon with two dozen Attends. But she reminded us that one of these mornings we will be unable to wake her, and she said that we shouldn't feel personally responsible when this happens. This morning I went up to check on Linda and found the room smelling like that of an infant with a full diaper. She'd had a bowel, movement in the night. She was partly awake, and she agreed at once with my suggestion that I change her. I ran and got some old towels for washing her, a basin of water, and another towel to place underneath her while I changed her. All went well, except that I hurt my back lifting her up to get the clean napkin underneath her. I covered her up again with her duvet, gathered the soiled towels, and rushed them down to the laundry room. I had to clear dry laundry from the dryer and move washed laundry to it from the washer before I could start washing them. Sara's surprised me with a birthday gift. My birthday is on Wednesday. She's bought me a new digital cell phone and a cellular modem to use with my laptop while traveling—except that to do so I'll have to change my Internet service provider and possibly my cell-phone service. I'm afraid that rather than looking pleased I sat and looked at the presents with some alarm and perplexity. It is a wonderful gift, but it seemed to confront me with more decisions and changes to make than I want to face right now. She reassured me that the changes can probably be made one at a time. We went out together to get wine for a beef bourguignon, and while we were driving she began the process for me by having the new phone activated and getting the number changed from Linda's name to my own. For the past year I've been using Linda's cell phone and account because she had a more advanced and reliable phone. When we get back Sara looks at the most recent bill for that cell phone to see if I have an appropriate plan. I'm paying for two hundred minutes a month, but the last bill showed that I'd used only seventy-three. I tell her that I don't use it much because I don't have anyone to call anymore. She's 256

puzzled. I explain that when I used to call Linda from wherever I was we would get into conversations—who I'd seen, what they'd said, what I think about that—but now when I call home it's only to relay a few facts to Mike. Linda enjoys her supper and tries to talk to us, but none of the words she utters make much sense. Still, she smiles when she says them, and we smile back and try to guess what she wants. She has difficulty sitting up to eat, and, as usual, she lies on her left side with the plate and glass on the bed beside her. This leaves her only her right hand to eat with. She can barely reach far enough to set her wine glass down safely. She solves this problem today by using the base of the glass as a spoon, so she doesn't have to put it down in order to eat. John phones later and I tell him about this; he laughs heartily at her ingenuity and quips that the right side of her brain must still be working well. A couple of times during the meal she speaks Soren's name, and once she says "Soren?" and then "Siggie," as if perhaps she's got the wrong name. April 16, 2000 I get up early again. Linda is asleep. I check on her a couple of times while making coffee, feeding Stevie, and watching Seizer outside to make sure he poops but doesn't bark. Linda's napkin will undoubtedly be wet, and I keep thinking I should change her. But it's almost impossible to change her unless she cooperates, or at least doesn't resist. The easiest way to go about it is to sit and talk to her for a while, get her to smoke a cigarette, and get her awake enough to know what's happening. And so I manage. By noon Linda's lying on her bed groaning, eyes partly open, moving around as if trying to get comfortable. She seems only partly conscious. We ask her what she wants and she stares at us blankly, or she says "No," or she glares at us as if she wishes we would go away. Sara has been baking an angel food cake for my birthday and is planning to serve it with whipped cream and raspberries. She's also roasting a leg of lamb, one of my favorites, and once one of Linda's, although during her chemotherapy she developed an aversion to both roast beef and lamb. Sara's planning to have a plate of Chinese food in reserve for her. 257

Around 4:30 Sara decides to try to give Linda her late-afternoon decadron—usually Mike's task. She comes back in tears. She tried to get her mom to talk to her, but the best she could manage was to get her to nod or shake her head. Linda wouldn't bring her hands out from under the covers. But she did open her mouth. So Sara reached to put the pills in. Instead of taking the pills, Linda lifted her head and bit Sara's thumb and finger. The pills fell into her mouth. Despite her surprise, Sara tried to get her mom to drink some water. She thought the pills would otherwise taste awful. Linda began pushing the glass away, punching at it with the bed covers. Sara left her there and came back to the kitchen to continue preparing dinner. I tell Sara not to take it personally, that Linda has bitten me also—when I tried to give her pills on Tuesday. Sara says it wasn't just that, it was that her mother was no longer there, that this person wasn't her mother. We gloomily begin taking dishes and glasses up to Linda's room to prepare for dinner. Sara wonders if we should. Linda keeps growling and groaning whenever we come into the room. Maybe we should eat downstairs by ourselves, Sara suggests, and leave Linda alone. I pretend to be optimistic. "She'll probably cheer up when we offer her some wine," I say. We prepare a plate for Linda with the roast lamb and baked potatoes cut up into small pieces and place it on a board beside her. She tries to push it away. We tell her in upbeat voices that this is good food, my birthday dinner, that Sara has cooked it. I take a glass of wirie to her, a 1988 Saint Estephe, which we bought in France in 1992. She ignores it. We begin eating and then notice that Linda has started picking at the lamb and potatoes with her fingers. She eventually eats all the meat and potatoes on her plate. She turns to us and calls "Hello?" She seems to want us to take her plate away. She's not sure what she wants, so Sara offers her a cigarette, putting it in her mouth and then lighting it for her. Linda seems pleased. She notices her wine and manages to pick up the glass and drink without putting down the cigarette. She drinks most of it and holds up her glass for more. I give her what's left in the carafe. 258

We begin clearing away the meal while she continues to sip the wine. I remind her that we bought this wine in Nice. She smiles and says "Good, good," as if she understands. Sara has to catch the 7:25 train—Mike's going to drive her to the station. I tell Linda that Sara has to go back to Toronto, and she moans as if sad. Sara goes over to her and says "I love you," and Linda says "I love you too" and smiles and raises her head up to kiss her. Later we are unable to wake her for her last decadron of the day. April 17, 20oo Tomorrow is the deadline for submitting final grades for my undergraduate class, and I have only about a third of the last set of essays marked and none of the exams. Every time I think about all the things I have to do, my pulse rate starts to soar. The first thing I think about in the morning is Linda—is she still alive, will she wake up to take her pills? This morning I get up and peek into her room, and she is lying on her right side, facing away from the television, breathing slowly. I say "Hello" softly, but she continues sleeping. I go downstairs and begin my morning routine—preparing dog food, making coffee, baking some frozen baguettes. Mike comes down around ten and says that his mom is still asleep. We think we'll wait until the helper comes—today she's coming at eleven— and let her change Linda when she gets her up for her shower. Noella is also going to visit today. Mike and I discuss what we're going to ask her. He's worried about the number of evening decadron pills that his mom's missing, and he thinks her missing them is making it more difficult to wake her in the morning. If we don't manage to wake her at all during a day she will get no decadron, and much of her remaining brain tissue will swell and she will slowly die. I'm concerned about the delay in getting her changed in the mornings—if we had someone come earlier to help us we could get that done, even if she didn't wake up until later. I mark essays most of the morning. Michelle, today's helper, comes shortly after eleven, and with Mike's help she gets Linda into the shower and a clean napkin. But Linda is very unsteady in the shower—her feet keep slipping. Mike 259

thinks we need a rubber bath mat but then wonders whether it wouldn't slip also, since the bottom of the shower stall has its own rough, no-slip surface. When Noella comes she suggests that we give Linda all four of the decadron pills between her waking and the end of her supper. She also says again that one day we will be unable to wake her for the decadron, and that we shouldn't feel guilty when this happens. It will inevitably happen. The decadron is only palliative. She also suggests that we have the helper who gives Linda a shower come in the late afternoon and have a second helper come around 9 A.M. to change and wash her. We agree, and Noella says she will ask Community Care to make the change. April 18, 2000 What continues to be surprising about Linda's illness is the way her intelligence keeps fighting through it. The tumor hasn't simply transformed her from a very bright woman into a stupid one, Each time it has taken something away from her, she has tried fiercely to adapt. As when, unable to find the word "wet" to tell us that her napkin needed to be changed, she substituted "cold" for "wet" and "warm" for what she wanted to be. Every seemingly nonsense utterance that she makes we feel morally obliged to try to decode. Even her yells have been calculated and expressive—not uncontrolled shrieks, but modulated cries conveying dismay and indignation. Yesterday, because her right hand has become weaker, she began lying on her right side to eat. Today she managed to communicate that her pills tasted bad, and that she couldn't "do them." She is apparently unable to swallow quickly, or she forgets that she needs to take water to wash the pills down, and they dissolve in her mouth. That's probably why she has been reluctant to take them, and why she bit Sara. Mike asked her if she could eat them in ice cream, ami she understood and nodded vigorously. I continued marking the last of the essays early this morning, while Linda slept. Mike got up around 9:30 and started trying to wake her— 260

talking to her, helping her with a cigarette. I had to go to the university for a scheduled office hour. When I got back, Mike told me he had successfully given her the pills in ice cream, and that she'd woken up enough to feed herself, although there was now ice cream all over her pillow and down the front of her nightie. The agency that sends helpers called to tell me that, beginning tomorrow, it will be sending them on the new schedule that Noella requested. Someone will come at 9 A.M. to change and wash Linda, and someone else will come at 5:30 to give her a shower. Each day I cook Linda's supper knowing that it could be her last meal ever. Today I decide to cook T-bone steak, some fresh brussels sprouts, and some hashbrown cakes—if I cut up the steak for her and halve the brussels sprouts, it'll be all finger food. I bring up a 1993 Australian cab from the cellar—one we've been saving. She manages to eat most of the steak and half of the potatoes and sprouts. She struggles with the wine. Lying on her right side, she has trouble grasping it with her left hand. She lets it fall just as she's drinking from it, and it lodges on an angle against her shoulder. A few ounces slop onto her chest and armpit. I refill it for her and put it back into her hand. Shortly after the meal she falls asleep. We try to wake her for her last pill of the day, but we are too late. April 19, 2000 It's my actual birthday. I get up early again to get the dogs fed and coffee made before the new helper arrives at nine. Linda is sleeping crossways on the bed, just as she had been when I went to bed last night. The helper who comes is Brenda, who was here once two weeks ago. She's a tall, friendly woman, a little younger than Linda. Mike comes down from his room when he hears the dogs barking at her arrival. We all three go up to Linda's room. "Hi, sweetheart," Brenda says, trying to wake her. Linda opens one eye and looks at her. "Someone's here to help you get up," I say, somewhat more loudly. Linda groans and moves her head away. "Go," she says. "Want to go." 261

I can tell from the tone of her voice that it's us she wants to go. Brenda thinks she is supposed to give her a morning shower, like the last time she was here. We explain that she's mainly here to change Linda and give her a local wash. She stands back, unsure of what to do, and she asks if we have a basin and towels. I start running warm water in the bathroom and show her where the towels and basin are. I also explain that Linda spilled wine and ice cream on her nightgown yesterday, that her nightgown and sheets and duvet cover need to be changed, and that we have clean sheets ready. We try again to wake Linda. "Poor sweetheart," says Brenda, trying to get Linda to look at her. Linda pulls the duvet higher around her head. "No," she says. I can tell that she hasn't liked the note of sympathy in Brenda's voice. Mike and I begin gently removing the duvet, from the bottom. Linda moans. We remove it from her grasp beneath her chin. She gives one of her long, expressive screams—"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" Brenda steps further back. "I usually don't change someone who says no," she says. Mike and I persist. We roll Linda onto her side and talk her into cooperating with getting her nightgown off. She seems only semiawake. I peel the duvet cover off the duvet and take it and the nightgown down to the laundry. By the time I get back Brenda has the very wet diaper off and is washing Linda. Mike has removed the soiled pillowcases and peeled the mattress pad and sheet from one side of the bed. I help him put on clean pillowcases, then I help Brenda, who is baffled about how to get Linda's nightgown on. "We can't let you go naked," I joke, as I lift Linda's head and begin pulling it over. She groans, but she puts up only token resistance. We pull the soiled sheets and mattress pad from beneath her. Mike installs a clean fitted sheet on the other side, but we're going to have to roll Linda onto it in order to get the sheet spread across the bed. Again, Brenda's not too enthusiastic, but she makes sure that Linda's arm is comfortable as we roll her. I tell Linda that she'll soon be warm and clean. Mike and I 262

quickly finish putting on the sheet and then put her duvet back over her. She pulls it around her and seems to settle immediately into a deep sleep. "Glad that's done," I say. I feel exhausted and tense. "But I didn't do anything," Brenda says, in a somewhat puzzled tone. "You guys did it all. You were great." I smile. "It was a lot easier with your help," I say. Which it was. Her being there at the very least obliged us to get the bed changed quickly. And she did change and wash Linda, jobs Mike and I can do but aren't especially keen on. I got all my essays and all but three exams marked yesterday, and I have to submit the final grades sometime today—most conveniently during my twelve-to-one office hour. Knowing that Linda is comfortable makes it easier to work, and I manage to finish the marking, record the grades, and calculate the term grades and the final marks. I decide to cook Linda duck again for supper and to serve one of her favorite Margauxs—one we'd been saving for a special occasion. Now all her occasions threaten to be special. Amy, a new helper, arrives at 5:30 to bathe Linda. Linda's awake, so I leave them with Mike, who has the strength to lift and support his mom. Mike tells me afterward that all of Amy's experience has been with children— Linda's the first adult she's been sent to assist. She didn't know how to get her to her feet, or how to roll her onto a napkin when changing her, or how to support her when she was shuffling unsteadily towards the shower. Noella drops by shortly after and asks how the new assistance schedule is working. We tell her it is very good in terms of Linda's needs. Mike comments that he wonders, however, whether Brenda will be back again. She seemed very distressed by Linda's condition, he says, and then he recounts for Noella what happened. "But you shouldn't have had to do that!" she exclaims. "These people are supposed to be taking the load off the family!" I shrug and say that it was still better than no help at all. I resist muttering about Mike Harris's government. Noella shakes her head and said that this isn't the way it's supposed to be. 263

The helpers have all been kind, compassionate people:, however unprepared they are for the demands of Linda's condition. I don't want to say anything bad about them, and, as well, I have little to compare them to. They all work for a private contractor that now, under the Harris government, makes competitive bids on services that used to be done by the Ministry of Health itself. They may cost the government less than its own heath-care workers once did, but they probably have less training. But how would a person in my situation know? April 23, 2000 I was away Friday and Saturday, and I got back late last night and missed supper. Sara waited up for me, as Linda would have, and she had a freshly grilled steak ready. Mike and Sara tell me that Linda's much the same—not waking up until early afternoon and staying awake only until after d inner. On Friday morning, when the home-care worker was changing her, she'd seemed asleep but was still awake enough to swear—groaning "Fuck!" and "Christ almighty!" several times. I joke to Sara that perhaps the first words you learn are the last you forget. She pretends a smile. Mike has being giving Linda all of her sixteen milligrams of decadron within this five-to-sixhour window—she's been interested in eating the ice cream that he now dissolves it in. But the children also tell me that the home-care workers have been unable to get her into the shower for the last two days. They can stand her up, but her legs don't shuffle forward. I look in on her after I feed Seizer, but she's sound asleep. In the morning she wakes up around eleven. I go in to see her, and she raises her head excitedly and says "My my!" She clearly knows I've been away. I tell her about my trip, but she looks away and closes her eyes. She doesn't seem able to follow. When the evening home-care worker comes, Linda is still sort of awake but doesn't want to cooperate. She glares at her and mutters "Goddamn." Mike and I simultaneously cajole her and remove her covers so the worker 264

can bathe her and we can get to work changing her duvet cover, sheets, and pillowcases. Mike tells me he had a particularly messy diaper to change yesterday. He got to Linda only minutes after she had filled it, but it had already leaked over the waistband and she had picked at and smeared it onto the duvet cover. So the cover and sheets on now are temporary ones. He'd even had to wash the water-resistant pad, but it's ready to go back on now.

Once we have all the bedding changed and Linda back under her duvet, I sit down beside her and take her hand. I tell her that she's warm and clean now. She smiles and squeezes my hand. We sit there like this for about ten minutes until she falls asleep again. Meanwhile, Mike has been cooking a beef bourguignon. He tells me that Linda can no longer handle both a meal and a glass of wine simultaneously, and that I should hide the wine from her until after she finishes. When we take the meal up to her she is semiawake again. She starts eating without asking about wine. She picks at the food for about twenty minutes then pushes the plate away. I take her a glass of wine and trade it for the plate. She smiles happily as soon as she sees the glass. She empties it within a few minutes and holds it up silently for more. I refill it, and she drinks about half before falling asleep with the glass precariously tilted in her hand. April 24, 2000 Linda's sick gurami is still hanging in, swimming awkwardly at the far end of the tank, away from the others. A few neon tetras dart by, and it lurches out of the way. It seems neither better nor worse, its gray fins still hanging gracelessly, despite Mike's treatments of the tank. Sara went back to Toronto last night, but she's coming back for Wednesday and Thursday before leaving for a weekend in New York that she's been planning for several months. I don't think anything's going to happen to prevent her trip. Although today Linda's been physically quite weak. When I brought her an apple fritter from Tim Horton's this afternoon, I found her semiawake and so close to the edge of the bed that there was no room 265

to set it down beside her. She struggled to move backward, but without effect. I had to call Michael and have him pull her gently backward. April 25, 2000 Michael's growing patience with his mother is amazing. For the past few days he's been going in to see her a little before nine and begun talking to her, even though she's seemed to be asleep, in order that she not be abruptly disturbed by the home-care worker who comes at nine to change her. Even so, she usually yells and screams while the worker moves her and washes her, and sometime she strikes out at her. Mike continues talking to her, explaining gently what the worker is doing, and he usually succeeds in calming her. He goes to her again around eleven, first talking to her, then helping her with a cigarette, and eventually getting her awake enough that she can accept spoonfuls of ice cream into which her decadron has been crumbled. He feeds her one teaspoonful at a time, waiting for her to chew and swallow, much like she fed him spoonfuls of pabulum and strained vegetables thirty years ago. Midafternoon he may cook her French toast. In the evening he has her decadron and ice cream ready for her as soon as she has finished her meal and wine. He also continues to help the home-care workers, and after they leave he rushes the soiled towels and/or sheets down to the laundry room, begins washing them, and brings clean ones back up for the next change. Since the day I hurt my back lifting Linda, he's done almost all the work supporting her, and he helps move her. And, with his science-trained mind, he's noticed things and offered suggestions that might never have occurred to me. Linda's terrible plight is showing how competent, adaptable, and reliable Mike can be—what enormous resources he'd have to draw on if only he had the desire to do things. April 26, 2000 Often I look in at Linda, lying semiconscious as she is right now, and wish that our lives together had been even better. Or that somehow we 266

had managed to magically heal the grudges we have carried between us. No chance of that now. She's probably forgotten that we ever had grudges. It's strange that the more forgetful she's become, the more I've found myself remembering such things. Maybe dying is at base the obliteration of memory. The crucial year for all four of us was 1975, the year that Linda's father died. Her father, whom she had often hated for his late-life alcoholism, for his ineptness in helping her mother manage his meager pension. She'd once told me that her professional ballet career ended when she was eighteen and he had drunkenly knocked her down the staircase and ruptured her stomach muscles on the newel post. She said she'd had contract offers from the Royal Winnipeg and New York City Ballets. Later she denied ever telling me the story and said she refused the offers because she didn't want the itinerant and impoverished life of a corps-de-ballet dancer. She began work as a bank teller instead. On a third occasion she told me roughly the first story, except that the incident began with her being enraged by his drunkenness and abusive talk and threatening him with a knife. He was at least partly justified, she hinted, in knocking her down the stairs. She told me of going to parties with her dad when she was a teenager and coming back home with him so drunk that he had to crawl up the front steps of their house on his hands and knees. Once he called out to her for assistance, she said, and, when she didn't answer, he looked around and found her on her hands and knees behind him. And of course she told me why she hated Christmas. Yet her father was still her favorite parent—she may have been angry at him, but she despised her mother. When she got news in February of 1975 that his recurrent prostate trouble looked to be life-threatening, she flew to Vancouver at once to be with him. I was on sabbatical and could look after little Mike and Sara, which I offered to do with somewhat selfconscious nobility. It was the early years of feminism, and I found it hard not to be ironically aware that circumstances were forcing me to do a 267

"right thing." On her arrival in Vancouver, Linda elbowed her mother aside, having no confidence in her abilities, and took charge of her father's illness. Yet for much of the tune—at first she tried to sleep as many nights as possible at George and Angela's—her return also put her back in her parents' house, alone with her detested mother. This is a long story. I don't think Mike or Sara know, even though I'm sure it haunted their lives for five or more years. And if it hadn't occurred I'm not sure Linda would ever have gone to law school. Her father lay dying in hospital for almost six weeks. He could have come back home for part of this time, but Linda's mother refused to have him. Or so Linda said. Linda might have returned to Toronto before he died, but she met a young hippie drug dealer who was convalescing from minor surgery in the same ward as her father. Sometimes I've wondered whether her finding him and her dad in adjacent beds in the same ward caused her to confuse them. Or whether the strain of being again in the same house as her mother drove her, as it had when she was fourteen, to run. When the drug dealer was released, she went to live with him. His obliging common-law wife temporarily moved out. It was not till a week after the funeral that Linda agreed to return to the kids and me. She had one last big night with her lover at the Delta Hotel near the airport-—she said later that she had phoned me from their bed. She didn't tell me about him till she got home. I had been so excited that she was back. And I lurched immediately to a bizarre, sick, neurotic feeling, as if a church had been desecrated—a feeling I hadn't had about other women I'd discovered I'd shared. I wondered if it was because we had children, because of her madonna-like photos with them. After all, it was her passionate impetuousness that had brought her to me. She said, "Don't go out of your mind. You shouldn't have idealized me. It doesn't do me any good." Said angrily that she'd had the affair to break the hold my illusions had had on her. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to spend a week with him in Montreal at the Ritz-Carlton. She said she'd never before stayed in such a classy hotel. I said no. 268

Linda with Michael, winter 1970.

I'm still not sure why my no had force. There was an old .22 in our closet for which we had no ammunition. For most of the next two weeks she sat on our bed with the gun, and she pointed it at me every time I passed the bedroom door. I'd almost forgotten that. "Bang," she would say as the hammer clacked on the empty chamber. I wonder what little Mike and Sara thought. The only thing I said to them was that the gun didn't work. That their mother was unhappy. I was pretending to them that what was going on was normal. I and they continued our routines. I took them to their half-days at nursery school, did the shopping, cooked our meals, tried to continue writing my book on Louis Dudek and Ray Souster. Defying Linda by pretending to cope. By passively aggressive intransigence. The kids have never mentioned the gun since. April 27, 20oo Sara's been here for the past two days, working online for her company and helping with her mom. She cooked the steak and home fries we 269

had last night. She's flying to New York in a few hours for that weekend visit, but she'll be back sometime next week. I hope this doesn't disrupt her work. Linda's much weaker physically but surprisingly stable otherwise. She continues to wake up in the late morning and stay at least semiawake until after supper. She watches video tapes that we start up for her. Last night she yelled sharply when she found her arm trapped in an uncomfortable position in the bed. She has very little language, although she answered Noella's questions yesterday with a "Fine" ("How are you?"), a "Yes" ("May I see your arm"), and a "No" ("Do you need to be changed?"), and later she even came out with a sentence to Sara—"I don'i: want it"—when she asked if she still wanted her dinner plate. She's eatrag less, however, and drinking much less wine. I gave her a glass of a 1993 Pontac-Montplaisir last night, a very nice Graves that she had bought herself for our cellar. She sipped at it until it was half gone and then pushed it away. This morning I went out grocery shopping again—it seems like we're always needing something. Linda's running out of her laxative, and I stood in the pharmacy section debating whether to buy a small bottle, a two-week supply, or a more economical larger bottle, a six-week supply. I decided on the smaller one, choosing realism rather than hope. Linda would say I was being tightfisted. I bought more duck—it's been a while since she's had that. I keep recycling the same few meals that she's been willing to eat—duck, salmon steak, beef bourguignon, roast chicken, Chinese food, calamaraki, steak . . . Two weeks ago the list included tacos and spaghetti, but these are now too difficult for her to be; able to get from plate to mouth. I hope she's not going to get tired of the: meals I'm making—I'm getting tired of them, but that's hardly important. I feel disconnected from dates and schedules. Time seems to be moving very slowly, and yet I am also missing deadlines at work and am surprised that it's already the end of the month. I wish this terrible time were over, and yet I also don't want the only ending it could have. Sometimes I think I'm the least patient of the four of us. Linda still hasn't complained about 270

her condition. She's clearly uncomfortable much of the time and unhappy that she can't move. Yet she also can laugh at her limitations, especially when one of the home-care workers teases her about how unhappy she is to see her. She has extremely minimal moments of enjoyment—an apple fritter, a sip of wine, a TV program she can follow—and yet these seem to be enough, as if the ability to continue to experience such things has a value that exceeds all discomfort. April 28, 2000 Linda bit me again today. It was around i P.M.—Noella had come by to check on her. She hoped to check the rash on her right arm and her blood pressure, both of which she'd been unable to do on her last visit. Linda had been awake for an hour, but she groaned and covered her head as soon as she saw who it was. Noella is very soft-spoken and somewhat reticent, and she was perplexed about how to proceed. I told Linda what Noella needed to do and began trying to remove the duvet from over her right arm. I had to release the fingers of both her hands from the duvet to uncover her arm and then roll up the sleeve of her nightie. While I was opening the fingers of her left hand, she pulled my own left hand towards her mouth and bit down firmly, although without enough strength to break the skin. I'm not sure Noella noticed—I didn't flinch or pull back but continued extricating the duvet. The rash was much better. Noella then tried to wrap her sphygmomanometer around Linda's left arm. Linda began rapidly moving her arms to bat the device away and then tried to stab her fingernails into my arm—again without much effect because of her lack of strength. Noella shrugged and gave up, implying that there wasn't much one could do when a patient was irrational and out of control. It seemed to me that Linda's behavior was less out of control than it was in character—a continuation of both the angry resistance that got her out of her parents' home when she was fourteen and the pride that kept her from telling her mother about her illness. It's also a selective behavior, directed more 271

against kindly, quiet people like Noella and some of the home-care workers than against more assertive ones. This afternoon one of the latter, Pat, managed not only to get her to cooperate with being changed and bathed but also with having her hair washed with a gel that requires no water and is removed from the hair with a dry towel. I purchased it at a medical supply store this morning. Mike made another beef bourguignon for dinner. I took a bottle of red Cote de Ventoux to her room along with our dishes, but she showed no interest in it. This was a woman who until the last two months would insist on every one of our bottles of wine being decanted equally into two decanters, so concerned was she with getting at least her share of each bottle. Tonight, every time the bottle gurgled as I poured, or one of our glasses clinked, I expected her to raise her head indignantly and call for her glass. But instead she lay quietly, almost invisible in the bed, eating very slowly. Nevertheless I felt like I was cheating her, or deceiving her. I asked Mike if I should try to help her drink a small glassful. He shook his head and said she seemed to prefer orange juice. Just then she began pulling on the towel that Mike had arranged under her plate to protect the bed. She pulled it up so she could use it to wipe her mouth, and that catapulted her plate and the remainder of her food onto the floor. She did the same thing with her plate of duck last night. I go back in and look at her. She's sleeping again, her face quiet and peaceful. I find myself thinking again of 1975, that unpeaceful year. I discovered that in Vancouver she'd been quite public about her relationship with her drug dealer. She'd let him hang around her parents' house. She took him with her when she was visiting my old friends. She took him to her father's funeral and wake, where he met her brothers and sisters and fifty or so cousins. My friends there had begun making questionable jokes about how bright, cultured women so often get involved with self-important louts. The next time I saw Angela she had grinned at me mischievously and said, "Well, Frank, at least you know she didn't want him for his mind." I wonder now whether Linda'd thought she might not come back 272

to us. Or perhaps didn't know what she was planning. Or maybe hoped that I'd find out and tell her to stay away. Or was the whole episode merely a spontaneous, frenzied, life-affirming response to her father's dying? Some bizarre attempt to reach and affirm a man she both loved and detested? Another instance of clutching at the Utopian life she thought she had glimpsed in Swan Lake and Scarlett's Tara? The drug dealer followed her to Toronto the next week, thinking he was going to Montreal and the Ritz-Carlton, and he later wrote long, illiterate, sentimental letters, which she used to leave unfolded on our dining room table. I suspect now she wanted to implicate me somehow in their relationship. Or maybe to bring some of the sexual energy of her father's hospital room to our home. Sometimes we made love wildly, violently. The letters stopped. Most likely because Linda never replied to them. She spent almost a month holed up in our bedroom, gradually losing interest in pointing the .22, and then she came down and resumed work on the Northwest Territories writers' tour that she had organized. Within the next seven months she began a Smokenders course, wrote the Law School Admissions Test, and announced that she was paying a one-to-threemonth visit to Central America. She was ready again to dream. April 29, 2000 In some ways, to have Linda lie in bed all day, unresponsive, uncommunicative, feels familiar. Since the summer of 1976 the bedroom has been her preferred room while at home. That was when she returned from Mexico and Belize and didn't want me or little Mike or Sara to know she had resumed smoking. She holed up again in our master bedroom above the garage, coming down the five stairs to the main floor only to cook or eat. She stayed up there reading, doing crossword puzzles, or watching our old black-and-white TV set until my accusations of cigarette smoke in the en-suite bathroom brought her angrily down to sit smoking at the dining room table. Even after that she spent most of her time at home in that room over the garage, or in the large front bedroom at our 273

next Toronto house. This preference effectively, in my mind, made her a roomer in her own house—divided the house between her room, in which she felt most at ease, and all the other rooms, which the children and I had mostly to ourselves. As we do now. Not until she gave up the law in 1994 and moved to our house in London full time did she begin to inhabit those other rooms—shocking me by insisting on cooking all the meals, by briefly assuming the care of the plants in the solarium, by doing the grocery shopping, managing the fridge and our two freezers. Yet this was still a part-time inhabitation. She rarely if ever sat and read a book in the living room, or watched television with the rest us in our TV room. Instead she would lie in her bed to read, or watch her bedside TV set. Sometimes I wondered if she still experienced herself as a child in her parents' house, hungry for the privacy of her own room. At her urging I bought an antique chaise longue to put before the sunny bay window in her bedroom so she could sit there to read, but I never saw her use it, except for sorting laundry. She continued to read and watch TV lying in bed. April 30, 2000 There's been very little change. The last couple of days have been almost routine—the home-care worker comes around 10 A.M. and changes her. At best semiconscious, she flails and yells in protest. By noon Mike is able to wake her enough that she can manage a cigarette. He gives her orange juice and the ice cream with her decadron dissolved in it. An hour later he gives her French toast, or I bring her donuts. She watches or listens to her television programs most of the afternoon. The second home-care worker comes around 5 P.M. and changes her and gives her a bath. Friday evening's home-care worker, the one Linda seems to like best, managed again to give her hair a dry shampoo. We have dinner, and Linda drifts back to sleep. It's very likely that Mike and I are doing a better job of keeping Linda alive than a hospital would be able to manage. We keep three of her favorite gourmet ice creams in stock as media for her decadron—a rich chocolate with choco274

late chips and almonds; a Venetian vanilla ice cream loaf, which is interlaced with delicate layers of bitter chocolate; and a French vanilla ice cream, which we cover in homemade chocolate sauce. Hospital staff wouldn't even know she liked these things, let alone be willing to seek them out. We find her the foods she is most likely to eat—last night it was calamaraki. Tonight it's more T-bone steak. Bizarrely, the tumor also seems to be keeping her alive. Two weeks ago it was taking a few minutes more of consciousness away from her every day, but now it seems to have turned to other parts of her brain. Making her quieter, weaker, more passive—except during the visits of the morning home-care worker! Almost as if it wanted to take as much energy and humanity as possible from her before killing her. Not that I believe that a tumor can have consciousness and intention. It's merely a small part of Linda's body—starting perhaps with only a single cell—gone mad, turned against her. For the tumor, its own growth is a kind of suicide, for once it kills the body it was born from, it too will die. Cancer can be beaten. You just have to die to beat it. Maybe doctors should learn to talk to tumors. Offer them a better life. I sat down beside Linda this afternoon when I noticed her awake but turned away from the TV. She smiled. I smiled back. "Did you . . . ?" she asked. I nodded to indicate that I wanted to hear her question. "Did . . . ?" she asked, and then she looked down, apparently unable to say more. She's said things like this to me several times in the past few days. "Have . . . ?" she's said. Or "How is ... ?" I'm sure she knows what it is that she's been trying to ask. As before, there's been no point asking her to write the question—she's as incapable of getting her hands to respond to her thoughts as she is of making her mouth respond. I can only hope it's not an important question. I try to tell her things that I think she'll want to know about. I think of Jacob Marley on his death bed, trying to communicate with Scrooge. I hope her questions haven't been that metaphysical, or as crucial to her. I don't think it likely. But I worry anyway. A few hours later I take Linda the steak, home-fry patties, and snow 275

peas I have cooked and cut up for her, and she looks at the plate and says "Shit." "Don't you like steak?" I ask, in case she hasn't recognized what it is. She looks up at me quizzically but says nothing. I can't: be sure whether she doesn't like the whole meal or doesn't like one of its parts. But she seems disappointed, as if she's hoped for something else. I leave the plate beside her and sit down to eat my own steak, feeling somewhat troubled. From where I'm sitting I can't see whether she's eating or not—she has the duvet piled up over her. But ten minutes later, when Mike comes with her orange juice and ice cream, he retrieves the plate, and most of the steak and half of the home fries are gone. She hasn't touched the snow peas, however. Maybe the word for her now is "chthonic," or "enigma.tic." Maybe she's become more muselike, more inscrutable, more delphic, as in oracular. Maybe her condition only illustrates how painful it would be to be an oracle. I resolve to try a questionnaire with her tomorrow about dinner. I will suggest various meats, and then various vegetables, and I'll look for her to nod her head, or to say "Yes" quietly, as she sometimes still does. Yes. May i, 2000 There was more to yesterday than I noted. When I was shopping for orange juice for Linda in the morning I noticed that the supermarket spring garden tent had opened in the parking lot. There were stacks of bedding plants and seedling vegetables—pansy, impatiens, marigold, all in bloom; cabbage, chive, broccoli, and tomato, ready for planting. For four dollars I bought four seedlings each of four varieties of tomato—two of them cherry tomatoes, which Linda has always rejected. I planted two seedlings of each variety in our garden and put the others on one of the light tables in our solarium. It's the earliest I've ever planted, but the longrange forecast is for warm nights. I figure we should take what advantage we can of global warming! It's also the first time in thirty years that I'm 276

planting my own garden, not one that's also Linda's. Still, I wish I could tell her about it. She might agree that cherry tomatoes aren't a bad thing for the small salads of a prospective bachelor. Or should that be widower? Buying the tomatoes caused me to consider a large sunny window in our back kitchen, where a small cherry tomato plant might thrive. But the window is blocked by a table covered with a heap of things that Linda placed there, and by boxes of things that Mike, Sara, and I put there over the last few months during our cleanups. A lot of the things seemed to be useless, or candidates for a garage sale, so I decided to get a couple of garbage bags and clear the way to the window. There were numerous small packages of dog food—free samples, prizes Seizer had won, or health items that Linda had bought to try to strengthen Soren or Siggie. There were torn bags and empty boxes, broken cups, an egg tray from our refrigerator. A couple of odd shoes that belonged to Linda—perhaps one of the puppies had eaten the mates—her gardening gloves, four pairs of her winter boots, the purse she had used last spring. Although I had promised myself I would not throw anything of hers away until she was no longer here, I told myself that she had already discarded most of the latter by having replaced them, and I dropped them into a garbage bag. I gathered the various dog-food items into a grocery bag for Mike to give to friends who have dogs. In the egg tray there was a pile of inch-square pieces of paper that I hadn't seen before. On each, in Linda's handwriting, was noted a small task—"clean TV screen," "clean fireplace glass," "sweep dining room," "wipe coffee table"—evidently the beginnings of a job jar. I couldn't tell if she'd ever used it, although the slips of paper appeared clean and uncreased. On the table and in the boxes were also numerous jars of homeopathic remedies—selenium, St. John's wort, echinacea, essence of garlic, valerian, beta-carotene, glucosomine sulfate, chondroitin sulfate—several of them unopened. Was this a sign that Linda had known she didn't feel quite right and was searching for a remedy? There were also six or seven small, ugly baskets, each large enough to hold one bottle of wine, several 277

with the price tags still attached. There are more of these in the dining room. I remember her buying them a couple of years ago and not being able to give me a plausible explanation for it. Most were much too Baroque in design for her to have wanted in earlier years. Mike came by as I was placing them in a potential-garage-sale box, shook his head, and suggested they might have been an early symptom of her tumor. Along with the garish, inedible supermarket cakes? Maybe. The various home remedies also seem to me a sign of Linda's general insistence on staying in charge of her own illness, of resisting having it medicalized, and later of resisting having medical treatment kept separate from discussions of her death. "How am I going to die" she kept asking Dr. Fisher and Dr. Macdonald last summer. Not a question they had trained themselves to answer. Linda may have abandoned the job-jar slips, but after being diagnosed she had replaced them with careful kitchen routines—keeping everything in its place, following recipes exactly, planning meals days in advance—as she prepared to deal with the next stage of her dying. She'd kept saying to Mike and me that she was going to have to rely on us to deal with the medical things and to know what she would want. Maybe we should let her die at home. How angry she was her last time at the Cancer Center when she couldn't drive herself home, couldn't move her wheelchair to the doorway, couldn't get Mike and me to drive her home, couldn't will the ambulance to arrive to take her. May 2, 2000 I'm still wrestling with the wisdom of our plan to send Linda to St. Joseph's once she appears to have lost all consciousness. I know she's unlikely to notice she's been moved. Yet I also keep thinking how fraught the notion of home was to her until recent years. How she ran from her parents' home. How her first husband twice, unilaterally, abruptly, dissolved their home. How she had such ambivalence about our own home— about being in it, or returning to it from her father's funeral, or returning 278

to it from Belize. Hardly seems fair to send her from it, I think, when, since 1994, she has lived here with us wholeheartedly—well, wholeheartedly apart from that small reserve she kept about being so much in her own room, with her own TV. I'm so glad we've been able to give her a home. Linda's problems with "home"—I find myself thinking of the dramatically Oedipal dimensions of Linda's family life, and of the openings and confusions her father's death delivered. Find myself remembering again— remembering her memories. Her family—a mother whom both father and daughter treated at best with toleration, at worst with contempt; a father whom the daughter preferred to her mother and was tempted to idealize; a daughter who, by twelve years of age, in apparent self-defense, pushed her mismanaging mother aside and angrily administered the family finances herself, giving her mother and father allowances, saving to pay the property tax and shopping for groceries and clothing. Or so she recalled—which is enough, of course, to have made the drama real, for her. But she also tried to run from this drama—leaving home when her parents agreed to Susie acquiring a pony, moving in with older girlfriends; leaving again at eighteen to marry her first husband. I wish I'd understood some of this back when she returned from her father's funeral—seen that she was in at least as much trouble as I was. Maybe I was too worried about my part in her trouble. I also find myself curious now about whether, sometime back in the 19505, bright, precocious Linda and her pension-earning dad scapegoated her mother as the weakest member of a terribly dysfunctional family, laying the groundwork for Linda's lifelong contempt for "weak" women and her determination never to be weak herself. I know she saw herself as being strong—ruthlessly strong—while her father was dying. Scapegoating was a strategy that was hard for me not to play with our own children; it was hard not to portray Linda as the strange, unstable mother who retreated with a gun to our bedroom, impetuously abandoned them for Central America, neglected them to attend law school, spent family money 279

to maintain an unprofitable law practice. And portray myself as the reliable father. For her part, Linda often played into such a contrast by offering our children a variant of it: me as cautious and tightfisted and herself as impetuously generous—an oddly accurate self-characterization, considering her childhood unhappiness with her mother's foolish spending. Once, when Sara was eight or nine, a family friend asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Glancing at her mother, she replied that she wasn't sure, but that she did know she did not want to be a lawyer. "Why?" the friend asked. "Because," answered Sara in her characteristically careful voice, "when I grow up I want to have time to spend with my son and daughter." Now Linda lies here, close to being the legendary madwoman in the attic, cared for by me and by the children whose childhoods once oppressed her. At last we have her to ourselves. "Unstable woman" is a massively unfair image that centuries of men like myself have found irresistible, and profitable. Making the woman weak and in need of care; and indulgence. Making her angers irrational and insignificant. Deliberately infuriating her with our own pretenses of reasonableness and equanimity. "It's certain," wrote Yeats, "that fine women eat / a crazy salad with their meat"—making himself the wise poet and his lost Maud the sex-mad Philistine. An image most often founded on the woman's economic dependence, her "less important" work, her isolation in the home. An image that could produce daughters contemptuous, like Linda, of their mothers. How unhappy Linda was our first years in Toronto, with our one car, which I took to work, two small children, no extended family east of British Columbia, few activities except shopping, cooking, and the early education of our children, no friends except my friends—some of whom, like poet bp Nichol and Matt Cohen, became dear to her. And my domesticating love. Most of these were things I hadn't wanted to see. In the summer of 1977, while we were visiting her mother and sister, she bought her own small car out of her earnings as a writers' agent, a blue 1967 AlfaRomeo GT, and she drove it back to Toronto herself. At law school and in 280

practice she made her own friendships—friendships that perhaps became more important to her than the financial success of her practice. May 4, 2000 The days go on in much the same way. One of the home-care workers arrives around 9 A.M. to change her. She screams in protest as she is being moved and washed. She wakes enough by noon to be given a cigarette and some decadron-laced ice cream. She rests and watches her TV in the afternoon, has a small lunch, is changed and bathed by another home-care worker around five, has a small supper, more ice cream, and falls asleep. She's eating much less, however, than she did a week ago. Two weeks ago she could eat an entire half duck; last week she could eat only a quarter of a duck; yesterday I gave her a quarter and she ate no more than a few pieces. Her vision seems to be getting worse. Mike thinks she has trouble seeing what's on her plate and in coordinating her hand with what she does see. He's noticed that if he rotates the plate she will find and eat more. With yesterday's duck, I rotated it twice, but she still ate no broccoli, a few egg noodles, and only a few pieces of the duck. We haven't bothered to offer her wine for over a week. Her morning protests don't seem caused only by her sleepiness. This morning she was awake and listening for the home-care worker—apparently alerted by the dogs barking and the sound of the front door closing. Mike told her that he was about to roll her over on her back. She began screaming at once. Mike joked that he hadn't begun rolling her yet, and that she might prefer to scream when he did. She stopped, and when he rolled her over, she did not resume. Later she punched him on the arm, striking her fist on his elbow. He's concerned that she may have hurt herself. Some of the home-care workers are shaken by her protests, and afterward they appear relieved to be leaving. But they come back, thank God. I had to replace the thermostat in the wine cellar yesterday, and today I had to thaw the air-conditioner there because the misbehaving thermostat had caused it to freeze up. It's a depressing place to work now—it was 281

entirely designed by Linda, and most of the wines there are ones that she excitedly chose in France or here at the Vintages stores for our retirementyears drinking. She often joked that she hoped her palate wouldn't age as quickly as the rest of her—some of the wines she bought will not be ready to drink before 2020. I worry that I'll feel guilty drinking them without her. I'm sure I won't enjoy them as much as I would if she was there to savor them with me. Who knows in what circumstances I will end up drinking them? Or whether I'll get to drink them at all—Linda's fate is at the very least chastening. I also had to bring home our last big wine order yesterday—mainly whites that Linda had wanted for summer drinking on the patio, and a couple more of the Chateau Musar that Linda had enjoyed as soon as one arrived last month. Usually I would bring the boxes to the dining room table and unload them so Linda could examine them, read the labels, anticipate the flavors. Often we would open a new bottle just for fun and make meal plans for sampling a couple of others later in the week. Today I took the boxes straight to the cellar. I didn't tell her about them—I worried that hearing about the wines could only cause her pain and disappointment. Or, more likely, bore her. May 5, 2000 I sat on her bed today and she took my hand and smiled weakly. She has a hard time smiling—I think it's because some of her facial muscles aren't working, and also because of how swollen her face is from the decadron. She hung on to my hand and lay there, sort of smiling, for about half an hour. At one point I put my left hand lightly on her arm and she smiled even more. I thought of speaking to her but decided not to. When I've tried to speak to her at other times like this she's stopped smiling and begun struggling for words. In Spanish "Linda" means "beautiful"—a meaning Linda always found embarrassing, although men often found her so. She used to joke about her attractiveness—how at Royal Roads Military College she'd been married to one-half of the English department and propositioned by 282

three-quarters. How when Roger left her without warning to go to teach there, she had revenged herself that very evening by seducing the manager of the bank branch where she worked—a reluctant lover who had not been unfaithful to his wife in twenty years of marriage—and by doing it on the bunks of Roger's Thunderbird-class sailboat at its mooring under Burrard Street Bridge. How she'd never met a man who didn't want her. But after her tumultuous summers of 1975 and 1976 she began to seem ambivalent about her attractiveness. She kept herself fairly trim throughout law school and in the early years of law practice. At her law school graduation party she made it drunkenly obvious that she'd been trying, unsuccessfully, to seduce one of her professors. Her continuing attractiveness kept me sexually interested in her, something she'd begun also to regard with some ambivalence. She enjoyed the power she had to arouse me and sometimes played games with it, prancing nude out of the shower in front of me, and then resisting—or pretending to resist, I could never quite tell—my advances. Maybe these were also Oedipal games. It was about this time that she began almost routinely referring to me as "Daddy." I can remember roughly and enjoyably mating with her at our Lyndhurst house, up against my study door a few minutes after she had coyly appeared there nude and freshly showered. And afterward wondering whether she had wanted to make me so eager. Maybe she had only been looking for a towel. But then her slow gaining of weight gradually made these moments less frequent. This process was also, alas, part of a dynamic between us. I am most aroused by slim, small, moderate-to-large-breasted women. I know the cultural stereotypes this admission raises, the ageism and "weightism." But I don't make the choice consciously. Under the circumstances, it would probably have been more practical, although perhaps problematical to Linda, for me to have continued to be aroused by her no matter what her appearance. It embarrasses me to know that my sexual preferences have most likely been produced by a culture that also produces anorexic child models, and by a father who lovingly called my ninety-eight-pound mother 283

Linda and Frank, June 1990.

his "kewpie doll" and "little girl." But they are the sexual preferences that— short of a few decades of psychotherapy—I am stuck with, and Linda knew it. By the late 19805 she'd begun to joke about how she was gaining weight, and a little later about how she was the heaviest member of the family. Some of this, she discovered, was due to a large fibroid uterine tumor, which she had removed by hysterectomy in 1989—only two months after she'd stubbornly walked with Sara and me to the summit: of Vesuvius and ridden a pony up and down the cliffs of Santorini. But overall I got the sense that she liked how her new appearance removed her from the sexual marketplace, both at home and elsewhere. That to her, sexuality had become troublesome. That she now had other dreams. This was not something I felt I could ask her about—not without her thinking I was 284

accusing her. Or maybe not without arousing a sexuality within her that in the past had both excited and pained me. Maybe I wasn't sure whether I wanted both the pain and the pleasure. Maybe I feared I might get only pain and lose her friendship. She began to dress in suits and matronly dresses. Even after the hysterectomy she made little attempt to diet or exercise, and she settled comfortably for weighing in excess of 160 pounds. She and I made a unspoken agreement that this was okay. Now I wonder whether this was an early moment in her death. And perhaps my death. I want my son and daughter to read this and remember. May 6, 2000 Seizer won a Group second at a dog show this morning—his best result this year. I took the rosette to Linda and she opened her eyes and contemplated it. I wasn't sure she would recognize what it was, and I was a little worried she might try to eat it. I told her that Seizer had had a big win. "White," she said. I wasn't sure what she meant but didn't want to discourage her, so I said, "Yes, Seizer, he's had a good win." I wondered if she was trying to indicate that Seizer, as a fawn, was our lighter-colored dog, and that she knew it was he who had won and not Stevie, our much darker, brindled dog. She stroked the streamers on the rosette and then held it against her chest. After ten minutes I wondered if she still wanted it, but she still clutched it tightly. After another ten minutes she seemed to forget about it and let it fall from her hand. Sara says she thinks her mom is visibly worse than last weekend—more groggy when "awake," less interested in food, and making little attempt to speak. When she first went up to see her mom yesterday she didn't seem to know that Sara'd been away. Another couple of times she didn't seem to know who she was, or at least she didn't seem to be interested in the fact that Sara was there. I wonder if she sees Sara at times like this. Maybe her deteriorating vision is responsible, rather than diminishing consciousness.

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May 7, 2000 Sara and Mike are busy making rhubarb pies. They couldn't stand seeing our vigorously growing rhubarb go unharvested. Linda woke up a little bit today but is having trouble finding her food on a plate, or recognizing what it is. We're now having to put it into her hand, one piece at a time. Once it's there she almost reflexively tries to eat it. I sit on her bed after she has eaten and fallen asleep, and I look at the swollen wreckage of the beautiful young woman in the mauve lame formal who rushed to kiss me on that long ago New Year's Eve. Who gave me the most intense pains and the most intense and enduring pleasures of my life. Sometimes I think that Linda's sexual restlessness during the middle 19705 had some dark link to her almost reflexive understanding of sexuality as power. Despite her zest for so many more things. She had usually been able to use her sexuality to pay back others or liberate herself. She once told me how a few months after being married to Roger she discovered that he was being unfaithful to her with more than one or two women. She confronted him with it and he replied that he felt it was so sad that she had experienced sex with only one man. How coidd she value her lovemaking with him, he asked, when she had nothing to compare it to? A short time later she began flirting with a young man who helped them sail their Thunderbird. She necked with him ondeck as they sailed, letting him remove her bikini top and reach inside the bottom, with Roger, she claimed, watching from the helm. Leaning back against the mast, she felt him slip her bikini bottom aside and try to enter her. She remembered wanting him to come in her, not so much for the sex as for the ending it would bring to Roger's ownership of her virginity. I imagine that in 1975 she had similar "ownership" feelings about our monogamy. She stood on tiptoes to help. She's sure he got in but not at all sure he ejaculated. Perhaps he was put off by Roger's calm presence. A few years after the young man on the sailboat there was the middle-aged bank manager, whom she trapped and seduced on the same Thunderbird the day 286

she discovered Roger had left her to live as a bachelor in Victoria. This time she had no doubt that she'd terminated Roger's ownership, that she'd repossessed her own body. She told me with some glee that she also felt like she'd cuckolded Julie Andrews, whom she thought the man's faithful wife resembled—oh, God, I think now, another sublimation of Oedipus. I wonder if in 1975 and 1976 she was worried that this power, this possession of her own sexuality, was waning. After having borne two children. Her last conquests, as she described them, as I remember her describing them, were the drug dealer, a Mexican Lothario, and a sad young unemployed black man she met in Belize. He was nineteen or twenty and sometimes played the guitar and sang calypso songs on local radio. She had enlisted him to accompany her in the rented Landrover she drove to Tikal, then she'd seduced him in the bungalow she'd rented there. The story she told publically in the years following about bravely driving alone through bandit-infested jungles to Tikal was untrue. I wonder what went through her mind whenever she told that story, as she often did, in front of me. The young man hoped she would get him a recording contract when she returned to Canada. She brought back two cassette tapes of him singing. Fortunately, our only cassette player was at my office. Our house felt suddenly filled enough with confused sexual tension. She kept saying that if I really loved her I'd be pleased she'd been so happy. As she did with the drug dealer's letters, she left the tapes and the singer's autographed picture lying casually about in our dining room, even though she was spending most of her time up in our bedroom, covertly smoking. Were her leaving them out, and her telling me about them, messages for me about her sexuality—was she perhaps flirting? Reminding me of who she could be? Demanding more or different space? Or was she only hoping I would toss the things out with our old newspapers, or donate them to Goodwill? Maybe all those things. I told her that I didn't want to hear any more such stories, or see things that might make me think there were more. That her life away from me was her business, and our life together ours. That there were more direct 287

ways to change our lives than by her casually bringing home other narratives. She scowled, said, "If that's the way you want it," and went back up to our bedroom. The next day she plugged our basement drains with tampons—I scarred my right hand trying to jam a sewer snake under the concrete floor. Later I threw out the tapes and photograph, and she never once asked about them. By then she was in law school. The young black man twice sent her letters in envelopes that glowed with stamps depicting tropical birds and fish, but again she appeared not to reply. I don't know what happened to his letters. Maybe I will encounter them later this year. She said he had been worried that she was collecting experiences. I'm still puzzled about all the questions of power here—how little she must have felt she had with me in these years, except sexually. How desperate her indirect aggressions seem now. How powerful she must have appeared, flying in as a foreign archivist and agent, to a young black man in Belize. My own power, which seemed trivial to me at the time, to be able to dictate many of the terms of our continuing. She brought back no more reports of adventures. But she did often say that some day she wanted to go back to Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Palenque, Altun Ha, and Tikal, but with me. I should have said yes. May 8, 2000 Sara, Mike, and I had a conference last night about Linda's last days. I asked them if they thought it made any sense to send her to the palliativecare unit once she lost consciousness entirely. Mike said he thought she'd be easier to look after at that point, rather than harder. They both thought that having to visit her would be more taxing than having; her remain here. Mike said he'd been wondering the same thing as it became clearer that she was suffering little pain and was likely to die peacefully. We agreed that I would speak to Linda's case manager and see if this idea was feasible. Sara caught the 7:18 train for Toronto. About an hour later John and Shirley dropped by. Linda was still awake, barely, and she smiled when they 288

entered her room but then tried to cover her head to shield herself from the bathroom light that I had turned on. I wondered aloud whether the light hurt her eyes because of her vision problems. Shirley sat beside her, holding her hand, and in about five minutes Linda fell asleep. I'd made tea, so we took it downstairs and joined Mike in the TV room. I told them about our family conference, and John said that he thought keeping her at home was a reasonable idea, and that we could undoubtedly get extra help from Community Care during the most difficult days. I commented that the worst part would be getting up in the morning and having to check on whether Linda had died in the night. I'd gone through several weeks of that with Siggie before finding him dead beside the front door that last morning. It would be so much worse to have to go through that with Linda. John thought that we could almost certainly get someone to sit with Linda through the night. Today, when the home-care worker arrived in the morning and asked Linda if she was ready to be changed, she muttered, very clearly, "Fuck off." We were all delighted, despite the difficulty her response foreshadowed. Sure enough, she wailed piteously all through the changing and washing. In her wails I could still hear unmistakable notes of her musical and cultured voice. She seemed groggy throughout the day and paid little attention to the television screen, although she may have been listening to the shows we played for her. At supper she ate most of her duck, with Mike's assistance, but then she frightened both of us by falling asleep just as he was giving her the last spoonful of decadron-laced ice cream, "What if she had fallen asleep five minutes earlier?" Mike wondered. We decided that we'd better alter her medication schedule to anticipate that. May 9, 2000 • I'm feeling very tired tonight, although I'm not sure why. I don't feel that I've accomplished much except for cooking dinner and doing a little marking in the morning. Mike hand-fed Linda tonight. She's been having new problems eating. Our placing food in her hand and relying on her to 289

take it to her mouth no longer works. She seems to be suffering some cognitive disconnection between her desire to eat and her ability to move her arm and hand. She usually seems to know what we are bringing. When I say I've cooked duck or salmon, or when we tell her we have rhubarb pie, she says "Yum, yum"—amazing, considering how she otherwise has almost no language. But then she makes no effort to reach for the food. But if Mike spoons it towards her, she opens her mouth and accepts and chews what he gives her—unless it's something she doesn't like or has become tired of during the meal. Tonight she didn't care for the rice, despite the hollandaise and dill sauce I had made for it. But she ate most of a salmon steak and several brussels sprouts. Again I'm impressed by Mike's patience and perceptiveness. Her late-afternoon wash and change by Pat, still one of our favorite home-care workers, was not good. For the first time she was not sufficiently awake to cooperate, and she wailed as loudly as she had in the morning. May 10, 2000 Late this afternoon, before the home-care worker came, I sat at the loo table in the bay window of Linda's room. She was lying on her back dozing. As usual, the pink balloon curtains, which Linda installed in the room ten years ago, were drawn, but there was bright sunlight outside that cast shadows of leaves onto them. It seemed like the room was perched in a warm, benign forest. I'm driving down to Pennsylvania tomorrow with Seizer for one last attempt to bring Linda back a big American rosette. I wish I weren't going. It seems so peaceful in the pink-filtered sunlight of the bay window. I could stay and enjoy that sunlight and its shadows— things Linda in all likelihood can no longer see. Twelve years ago, on similar days, we would sit on the shaded patio of our rented hilltop villa near Nice, doing nothing but sip chilled Alsace Riesling and watch sailboats on the Baie des Anges or birds in the overhanging olive trees. Linda said then, and a hundred times since, that her retirement dream would be to 290

own a similar villa, near Nice, or in Provence, and each time I would say that wasn't for me and talk about being cut off from citizenship and politics, from friends and relatives, from Canadian health care. Well, she still has the health care. I made tacos tonight. I hadn't made them since Linda began having difficulty picking up and holding food, but now that Mike is hand-feeding her all her meals, tacos once again seemed possible. I made them large, with twelve-inch soft tortillas. Mike optimistically took her two, but we were pleased when she ate all of one. I sat with her afterward. She smiled and put her left hand on my arm. Her wrist and arms are as slender and smooth as when we first made love in 1969. But her face is almost Buddhistic from decadron-induced swelling. She closed her eyes then opened them again and smiled. She moved her lips as if she was about to say something, but instead, again, she smiled. May 16, 2000 Linda's been much the same for the past few days—drifting in and out of consciousness throughout the afternoon and early evening, asleep or unconscious, hard to know which, from 7 P.M. until noon. She recognizes us during most of her conscious hours. She smiles if I sit down beside her and will clutch my shirt, or my arm or hand. She looks away, then she looks back and smiles. After five or ten minutes she will drift back to sleep and relax her grip. When she's sleeping there's an odd right-angle bend in both her wrists—a bend one often sees in people with cerebral palsy. It must have some neurological cause. It's not a way she ever used to hold her wrists. I cooked duck for her last night, and salmon—with Mike's help— tonight. She's eaten fairly well, as she did on the weekend, I'm told, when Mike and Sara fed her Kentucky Fried Chicken the first day, calamaraki the next, and a Big Mac the third. It's unclear whether she knows I was away. I had nothing to bring to her from the dog shows, so I haven't mentioned them. 291

It's been a busy few days. Seizer and several other Danes came down with severe diarrhea on Saturday—Seizer's was fairly bloody. I managed to get some antibiotics from his handler, which soon stopped the problem. Yesterday I took him to our vet for additional antibiotics to make up a fiveday course. Later in the afternoon Linda Woodhouse, one of the V.O.N. nurses, dropped by. She continues to be concerned about whether we should bring in a hospital bed for Linda, one that could elevate her head and perhaps allow her to breathe a little easier. I don't like the idea, because I don't think that Linda would like it. Mike tends to agree with the nurse and says that while Linda wouldn't like being moved from one bed to another and would probably scream in protest, she would soon forget she was in a different bed. John and Shirley came by around 8:30. Linda was in a deep sleep, lying on her back, wheezing or snoring gently. I mentioned die bed question to John, who said he thought her own bed is quite good eniough. He thought she'd probably just slide towards the bottom of a bed that could be partly elevated. If we want to raise the top of the bed, he suggested, why not put a thick board under the legs? Mike and I did this an hour ago, when Pat was here. May 17, 2000 We're waiting for Dr. McCully, who was supposed to be here at 1:30. It's almost two. Mike comments on how difficult it is to get things done when the day is broken up with medical visits like those of the V.O.N. nurses, or this one. He'd been hoping to bake another batch of rhubarb pies. Mike thinks the tumor may be invading more of the frontal lobes. He sees Linda becoming less rational even when awake—unable to see the value of being changed and washed. He's also worried about the effects of the tumor reaching her hypothalamus, which regulates body temperature. What would be the consequences of her being unable to regulate her body temperature? Would she become too hot or too cold? Would this be lifethreatening? 292

Dr. McCully's main reason for coming is to begin setting up subcutaneous injections of dexamethesone so that they are ready when Linda is no longer able to accept food. Dr. Macdonald had told us that Linda would receive no further dexamethesone at this point, but the V.O.N. and the Parkwood Palliative Care Unit want to continue it for palliative reasons. They think that Linda will still have some consciousness, and that an abrupt withdrawal of the dexamethesone would be extremely unpleasant. I dropped by the York Street liquor store an hour ago to pick up a cheap red for a beef bourguignon for tomorrow's dinner, and I talked briefly to Kelly, the Vintages representative from whom Linda and I had bought numerous wines in the last few years. Forgetting that I hadn't told her Linda was ill, I casually mentioned that she was close to death. Poor Kelly. I have to try to keep better track of who knows and who doesn't. I had two calls yesterday from people who have only recently found out—both wanted me to tell Linda that they are thinking of her. I grunted something affirmative both times. How can I tell them that she's unable to understand such messages, or that she has no idea that her illness is now generally known? Mike was feeding Linda a donut when Dr. McCully arrived—impressing the doctor with how well she can swallow while lying on her back. But otherwise Linda showed Dr. McCully very little, sometimes staring at her impassively when she spoke to her, but for the most part closing her eyes and ignoring her. I wasn't sure whether she was really groggy or whether she was treating Dr. McCully as she usually treats the nurses. The doctor listened to her lungs, although Linda tried to grip her duvet closely around herself to prevent it. Mike and I had to hold her hands. Towards the end of the doctor's attempts with the stethoscope, Linda began screaming angrily, like she does when she is being washed. Dr. McCully commented that in general Linda seemed comfortable, and that she would come back and see her in a month, unless we called her first. I wondered to myself whether Linda would still be alive in a month, and I casually asked the doctor whether she had had many brain tumor 293

patients. She said she'd had only three in twenty or so years. I said I was wondering what she could tell us about the likely rate of decline, and she said that it was so specific to the individual patient thai she really had no idea. May 18, 2000 Surprisingly, Linda continues to enjoy what minimal life she has. She said "Yum" last night when offered a taco that I had made. She smiles if I stroke her cheek. She looks around slowly if one of us mentions Sara's name, or John's or Shirley's, as if she's hoping they might be in the room. She can also make her dislikes very clear. Noella was just here, and when she announced herself to Linda—"Hello, it's Nc'ella, the nurse!"— Linda bellowed a loud groan in reply. She was relatively awake—Mike had given her chocolate eclairs and a cigarette only ten minutes before. Noella had not yet tried to touch her. I think it's her general mistrust of heath-care workers showing itself again—the mistrust that led her to be so angry at Dr. Megyesi for asking her to fill out a questionnaire, or at Dr. Macdonald for keeping her waiting. And perhaps showing itself much more strongly now that the tumor has disabled much of her social consciousness. I commented to Noella that Linda seems to have been relatively stable for the past three weeks. She replied that she could see change—that Linda was now unable to change her position in the bed, whereas when she'd last seen her, two weeks ago, she could roll from side to side with some difficulty. She also seemed more groggy than two weeks ago. Probably, if I were to look back through this journal, I would note similar changes. Sara's coming tonight—a day earlier than I'd expected. May 19, 2000 We had a scare last night. At six Mike went to give Linda her supper and ice cream with her last dose of decadron, but he couldn't get her to stir from her sleep. She'd been increasingly groggy througb.out the afternoon 294

and slept for part of it—something she's rarely done before. Mike was very disturbed, as if her failure to awaken was his own failure. He was also tired—he spent three hours this afternoon making the beef bourguignon, and he was looking forward to her enjoying it. He shook the bed and tapped her cheeks firmly, hoping for some response. Nothing. He stormed out, scowling. The poor boy must feel he's been single-handedly keeping her alive, and I'm sure he's partly right—that his persistence and our continuing to search for foods she will agree to eat has kept her alive longer than hospital care would have. But his personal investment in her continuing may be excessive. She is going to die in days or weeks, not months. I went back to her around seven. I stroked her cheek, and she opened her eyes and smiled. I called Mike with the news. He came back with her bourguignon and ice cream, and he managed to get half of the former and all of the latter into her, although not once did she open her eyes. He would touch her lips with the spoon, and she would open her mouth and slowly take the food. Today she continues to be very groggy. She doesn't seem to recognize Sara. If I go and speak to her she smiles weakly, and once she nodded her head. Dr. McCully called to say that she'd arranged for an unlimited prescription of liquid decadron to be available at a nearby drug store. I told her how drastically Linda's grogginess had intensified, and she said she thought Linda might well need to have the liquid decadron administered this weekend. May 20, 2000 Linda seemed better yesterday—at least better than we'd feared she might be. She opened her eyes when Sara went to her and said "yes" quite distinctly, as if confirming her recognition of who she was. She glared at me when I told her I'd been doing laundry for her—probably trying to tell me that she didn't appreciate being reminded of how much cleaning and washing she's causing. She ate all three dishes of ice cream and dexamethesone, two chocolate eclairs for lunch, and a frozen beef stir fry for supper. 295

However, Mike did have to shake the bed to wake her for supper. She doesn't open her eyes to eat, but she does eat. She also seems to understand simple things that are said to her. Mike will ask, "Are you ready for more food?" and she'll open her mouth slightly and extend her tongue. He repeats the question many times during each feeding. May 21, 2000 As I was driving to Toronto yesterday CBC Radio reported on a cancer research conference at which many of the speakers had commented on the ineffectiveness of treating solid tumors with chemotherapy. One researcher said that it extended life spans in fewer than nine percent of cases. Another suggested that oncologists were deceived by the tumor reduction some chemotherapies achieved—reduction in size does not lead to extended life if the tumor grows back quickly to an even larger size or mutates into a faster-growing form. On another program I heard yesterday, CBC reporters talked to an Australian gene research team that had stumbled across a. gene that appears to control the development of blood vessels. They had brought it to the attention of cancer researchers, speculating that if the gene could be used to turn off the blood supply to solid tumors, it could destroy them. But, they cautioned, the use of such a technique was probably a decade away— if further research pointed to it being usable. Linda's first tumor was a solid tumor, and it had developed its own elaborate set: of blood vessels. With radiation therapy, part of it mutated into an infiltrative tumor, one that used the preexistent blood vessels of the tissue it invaded. What if? A useless question, which seems to grow like cancer in the airwaves. May 22, 2000 I drank a bottle of Margaux last night, one of man)'' half bottles that Linda had bought to drink while I was away at conferences or dog shows. A1995 Chateau Labegorce. I had to struggle to identify the taste. I wanted the wine to be richly aromatic, to remind me of her. 296

Yesterday's CBC programs recalled for me how Mike and I have continued to speculate about what might have caused Linda's tumor. Did she stand too close to the microwave oven once too often? Keep her television set too close to her bed? (I always thought she did.) Drink too many colas sweetened with aspartame? Get too much radiation from her cell phones or from her cordless phone? Suffer more than she thought from the blow she received when she rolled her Camry? Most of our speculations assume the tumor to be a twentiety-century affliction. Did many people die of brain tumors before the twentieth century? There's very little data, possibly because medical science couldn't detect such tumors before this century. A person might merely have become mysteriously weak and confused and then died. What are the brain-tumor rates in low-technology countries? Again, it's a circular problem: these countries lack the technology to detect the tumors. What about Japan, where there's lots of technology but the cancer rates are low? Do the low cancer rates include low incidence of brain cancer? I wonder if I'll ever find out, or if I even want to find out. Are brain tumors in adults merely another product of the increase in humanity's life span? That seems unlikely—most patients, like Linda, appear to be middle-aged, not elderly. There also currently seems to be no shortage of patients for braintumor-research field trials—particularly if you take into account the difficulty patients like Linda have qualifying for such trials when the pathologists who screen patients for them are overloaded with applicants. Or you take into account how specific these trials are, each focused on one of a dozen or more narrowly defined tumor types. When I was shopping today I noticed a young woman changing her child's diaper on the front seat of the small car parked next to my van. The child cried a little, but so much more expressively than Linda. It wailed once, cooed, giggled, cried softly. There was none of the anger or sense of affront that we hear in many of Linda's long wails. It's hard for me to decide which is the more complex response. The child seemed incapable of the depth and passion of Linda's resentment. But for weeks now Linda has been incapable of the child's happiness and amusement. 297

May 23, 2000 Seizer won another Group second yesterday, but when I bring Linda the long red rosette, lettered in gold in both English and French, she doesn't seem to know what it is or have any interest in it. I wonder what she thinks of my continuing to show him. I remember joking to Kelly in the liquor store last week, after I had shocked her with news of Linda's dying, that what I've missed most during Linda's illness is being supervised. But it isn't so much being supervised as always having a second opinion or second perception to test my own against. Linda would notice things—about wines, wineries, wine descriptions, or dogs, or books that I was writing or writing about—that I hadn't. Her perceptions and memories extending and changing my own. I think George had something of the same relationship to Angela. We relied on each other's seeing and knowing of the world differently. When we were young we'd sometimes consider whether we should continue together, as we did in 1975 and 1976. Linda would often burst into tears, saying she loved me even if I didn't think she did, that though I was in many ways utterly unlike her she needed me because of that. I always thought I was lucky in some weird way to have her friendship. Still lucky. May 24, 20oo Not much change until yesterday afternoon, when Mike tried to get her to accept a cigarette in advance of her second dosage of decadron and the arrival of the home-care worker. She showed no interest in it and perhaps didn't recognize what it was. Mike persisted, lighting it for her, putting it to her lips, letting her smell the smoke. No response. But then she accepted the spoonfuls of ice cream he offered. And, after the homecare worker had left, she eagerly chewed the roast duck and broccoli I had prepared. Linda started smoking when she was fourteen and beginning to dance ballet professionally. She said it was part of ballet culture. She was also what you might call a "power" smoker—someone who associated ciga298

rettes with masculinity, assertiveness, decisiveness. She would wield her cigarettes dramatically to echo or reinforce her rhetoric, even when on the telephone. But she was serious about trying to stop smoking in 1975, after her father died. That mysterious year of reconsidering and remaking herself. She said she was doing it partly for our children, who were four and five, so they would have a smoke-free house, so they would have good parental examples. She enrolled in Smokenders, and for three months she was smoke-free. She wrote the Law School Admissions Test. Then on her way to Belize she stopped for five days in the Yucatan. Her middle-aged Mexican tour guide smoked Mexican Camels and collected American states in the persons of young female tourists, most recently Alaska. Linda said she briefly became his Canada—despite experiencing pain from a cervical coil she had had installed before she left—and a renewed smoker. Or did the tour guide become her Mexico? May 25, 2000 Sara wonders whether we should get Linda a nicotine patch—she's concerned that the lack of nicotine stimulus may make her more sleepy and hasten the moment that she no longer accepts food. Mike and I consider this, although Linda has in the past few weeks had no more than two or three cigarettes daily. I also mentioned the question to Susie last night when I called to bring her up to date on things. Susie says that she's used a patch and that it's easy to get too much nicotine from them and totally lose your appetite for food. Linda is continuing to accept food and orange juice. We decide there's no point in jeopardizing her willingness to eat. She's at last a nonsmoker. May 27, 2000 I've been out most of the day. Sara tells me on the phone that Linda's been waking for all of her meals, but that her left hand was swollen for a while. She and Mike are thinking of trying to remove her rings so that they won't cut off her circulation should the swelling resume. She jokes 299

that they will have to do this discreetly so that Linda doesn't think someone is trying to steal her jewelry. I reflect that Linda would be more likely to resent people rearranging her rings than to worry a.bout them being stolen. She stopped wearing her—our—wedding ring sometime in the early 19805, ostensibly because she was gaining weight and it no longer fit. She later bought herself a thin gold wedding ring—I wasn't sure why, although I think she said something about the inconvenience of not having a wedding ring. I'm still not sure why she would wani: to show that she was married—maybe it had to do with the conservative expectations of clients. As she gained even more weight, she shifted this ring to her little finger, the only one it would fit. She also wore, from time to time, two of my paternal grandmother's rings—a silver filigree basket of small diamonds and, more often, a gold band set with a half-carat diamond flanked by two similar-sized rubies. I think it's the latter and the substitute wedding ring she's wearing now. I suspect there's some symbolism in these rings and their cycles, but I've never tried very hard to see it. I once suggested that we have her original wedding ring enlarged, but she implied I was too interested in it. I think she liked the idea of having bought her own wedding ring. When we were first together she made a short ironic ceremony of presenting me with the wedding ring her first husband had given her. She hadn't wanted me to wear a wedding ring because Roger had worn one and slept, she was pretty sure, with a hundred or more other women during the four years they were married. Soon I'll be able to cremate her with any ring I wish, but I don't think I will. Well, maybe her substitute ring. She had strong mixed feelings about marriage, especially about our own wedding. We'd had a hard time finding someone to marry us, something Linda loved to talk about at parties. She always began by saying that she'd never wanted us to be married. She thought people should stay together because they cared about each other, not because they were married. Some of the married people listening would look uncomfortable. "Frank was the one who wanted us to be married," she would say. Maybe she wanted to make sure she looked more avant-garde than me. "But we 300

were living in Montreal," she would continue, "and I was pregnant with Michael, and in Quebec those days the government stamped 'Bastard' across the birth certificates of children born outside of marriage. I didn't want that for my child. So we tried to marry in Montreal, but we discovered that the fee for a civil marriage was around seven hundred dollars, about a month's wages in 1969. It had been set that high to placate the Church, which had opposed civil marriages. One could marry for almost nothing at a church, but I didn't want to belong to a church. Frank thought the Unitarian Church would be okay, but when he inquired he discovered that so many people wanted to be married there that there was a fourmonth waiting list. We decided to try to get married in Ontario, in nearby Cornwall. We told them we were British Columbians temporarily in Quebec. But the office refused us a license, saying that Ontario had a policy of not subverting Quebec laws. Next we tried Prince Edward Island. Frank was scheduled to give a poetry reading in Charlottetown in October, so we wrote to the marriage office there, and it wrote back saying they'd love to marry us as long as we were able to get a P.E.I, property owner to post a five-hundred-dollar bond. They didn't say what the bond was for, or what we'd have to do, or not do, to get it back. Maybe not scare the horses? So finally we drove down to New York State, to Plattsburgh, and paid five dollars for a marriage license and ten dollars to a justice of the peace-—a farmer who, when we appeared at his door, called to his wife, 'Martha, would you iron my white shirt?' A nervous young man arrived shortly after to pay a traffic ticket. The JP and his wife mistook him for our witness and had him take part in the ceremony. He was too confused to protest. The license office had also given us a huge food hamper that Plattsburgh was giving to all newlyweds, probably worth twentyfive dollars. So we came back to Montreal married and ten dollars to the good rather than seven hundred dollars out of pocket. I wanted to have something unwedding-ish, like Chinese food, for our dinner, so we went to a little restaurant in N.D.G. and splurged on lobster chow mein. Now we always celebrate our anniversary with takeout Chinese." Linda so enjoyed telling this story that it sometimes seemed she was 301

delighted we'd gotten married just so she could tell it. Now she'll never remember or tell it again. I'll have to keep telling it for her. I wonder what would have happened had we not married. Would she be dying of a brain tumor somewhere else? Would she have avoided the tumor altogether? I think that's unlikely. She always came back. To her children, her books, her bedroom, me. She used to say she felt like a guest in Roger's houses— that he decorated them thematically and insisted that all her personal items remain out of sight so as not to mar the effect. She hated her parents' home. But she personally painted every room of our first two houses in Toronto, designed their kitchens, helped me stack encyclopedia volumes to support the upper kitchen cupboards when we installed them, tiled both kitchen floors. Bought our enormous Victorian house in London virtually on her own. Hunted down appropriate antique furniture for all three. Even though she, herself, lived mainly in one or two rooms, she proudly presented each home to visitors as "ours." Yes, I think she'd have still come back. Angrily. Ambivalently. As if both "home" and "marriage" were things she'd like to have but not be forced to have. Linda hated to be forced to have. Has hated it even more recently. May 29, 2000 Yesterday Linda missed her supper and her evening pills. When the home-care worker came she'd been asleep and didn't notice that she was being changed and washed until it was mostly done. Only then did she start her usual angry wailing. When the worker left, Mike went down to prepare her supper and pills, confident that she was now awake. But when he got back to her she was once again in a deep sleep. He shook the bed, he removed her covers, he pretended to be about to change and wash her again. She offered no response. Today she was awake, as she normally is in the mornin g. Mike gave her extra decadron to make up for last night's missed dosage. When the homecare worker arrived in the evening, Mike had Linda's food and medicated ice cream ready to give her. As usual, she woke indignantly while being 302

washed, and he was able to spoon her food into her before she dropped back to sleep. It looks like we now have to have her meals prepared well in advance so we can scoop them into her the moment she looks conscious. We decided I should buy more TV dinners, so I went out and bought another beef stir fry, a chicken marsala, and a beef stew. May 30, 2000 This afternoon it's hard to tell whether she's awake or asleep. She's lying on her back with her eyes closed while her television programs play. From time to time she moves her mouth as if chewing something, or as if mulling over something important. She occasionally yawns. She has her left arm stretched out to the left, but she sometimes uses it to rub her mouth, or touch one of her teeth. I can't tell whether any of these are conscious actions. They could be the kinds of motions one makes in one's sleep. When I speak to her, her eyes seem to open slightly. I can't be sure. Can't be sure that she's heard me or that she sees me. Although when Mike touched her lips with spoonfuls of ice cream this morning and said, "Here's another spoon of ice cream," she opened her mouth and took the ice cream from the spoon. Or was that also a kind of reflex action? Mike's worried because her diaper was dry this morning. Yesterday he had the nurse come to check her because her urine had been deep orange, almost scarlet. The nurse thinks this is a sign of slight dehydration, but Mike wonders if she has a kidney infection. She drank the better part of four glasses of orange juice yesterday. June i, 2000 I'm still amazed by how one can get used to such a decisive disaster. Linda lies unconscious in her bed most of the day, and Mike and I go about our daily routine, letting in the home-care worker in the morning, doing Linda's laundry, medicating her, feeding her, as if this were normal life. Today I heard her cry out and found Mike rolling her over in the bed. He matter-of-factly told me that he now does this every six or seven hours, 303

at the instruction of the nurse, to help prevent bed sores. I'm also struck by how I am getting used to living without her. I no longer have the urge to bring her news, or to consult with her about problems. I go about my writing, editing, care of the dogs, shopping, meal planning, almost as if she wasn't here. I no longer worry about making too much noise singing in the shower. Or whether I have left the toilet seat up. What she will think of the wine I have bought. Her urine is normal today. Noella comes but doesn't go upstairs to see Linda. She asks us about her condition and whether we have enough supplies. I tell her we are running out of decadron and ranitidine capsules. I don't tell her that I hadn't thought Linda would still be needing them. June 2, 2000 It's morning. She's in a deep sleep, wheezing softly. Only her oncebeautiful oval face is showing. Her lips slightly open. There's still a long, rich scar across her full lower one. She told me she was dancing a principal role in a ballet at Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theater around 1961. Another story she'll never tell again. Maybe Swan Lake? She always said she couldn't enjoy watching Swan Lake because all her muscles ached at the end of a performance—that unconsciously she danced every step. It was during a pas de deux at a dress rehearsal. She was sixteen or seventeen. Her male partner missed a lift and let her fall, fa.ce first, into the footlights. The German-born ballet master—I think she said his name was Heino—didn't want to stop the rehearsal, wouldn't pay for a cab to the hospital. With blood dripping from her chin and still in her tutu, she stormed out to walk the fifteen or so blocks to St. Paul's Hospital. The ballet master trailed after her, calling her a stupid slut, a dumb bitch, insisting that she couldn't do this to his rehearsal. When their little street performance was about halfway to the hospital, he called a cab. She said both Heino and the principal dancer were arrogant, flamboyant gays who were jealous of a woman's attractiveness. She said there were a lot of them in the ballet. She said that gay men are a mixed bag, just like other people. 304

She also said that Heino was an autocratic Hitler-era German. She said that on the street she enjoyed the irony of yelling at him to go fuck himself. At St. Paul's they stitched her lip back together, and then Heino took her back in another cab and made her finish the rehearsal. Finish enacting the glamorous ballerina. I used to love that story, and the touch of that glamorous and unglamorous scar on my lips. June 3, 2000 We had another big scare yesterday. Linda was sleepy most of the day and impossible to wake for her noontime pills. She'd had no medication, food, or drink since early morning, and by four o'clock she was showing no signs of waking. I phoned the V.O.N. nursing team and left a message that they should come and install the butterfly valve, which would allow us to give her liquid dexamethesone. But when Pat came to change her at five, Linda began to struggle and yell. It was the most welcome sound I'd heard all day. Mike rushed in immediately with medicated ice cream and orange juice. But a few minutes later she was deeply asleep again. We took her supper to her, a beef bourguignon that Mike had worked at all afternoon, but she kept sleeping. We checked at 8 P.M., at ten, at midnight, but still she slept. Would she ever wake again? How long could she live without food or drink? Five days? Four days? But this morning she woke up once again while being changed. Mike had her medicated ice cream and juice ready just in case. Around one we found her awake again, and Mike spooned yesterday's beef bourguignon into her. Sara sat with her for a while. Linda opened her eyes slightly and squeezed Sara's hand, but her face remained impassive. Sara wasn't sure that she'd recognized her. Phoned my mother last night and told her for the first time about Linda's illness. It's her ninety-first birthday in a few days, and I didn't want to be telling her about it then. Also didn't want to shock her with news of Linda's death. But my mother seemed neither surprised nor shocked. She came up with her usual philosophical cliches. "You never 305

know," she said. "Life is strange. It's always the good that die young." "What about you?" I asked. She laughed. "I just keep on going," she said. June 4, 2000 Today Linda woke up again during her morning wash—"woke up" enough to eat her ice cream. I looked in around two and found her awake. I alerted Mike, who began cooking her French toast, which he thought would be easy for her to eat. I went out to buy more groceries. When I got back he said she had eaten both slices but had twice choked on the small pieces he was giving her. He was alarmed because he couldn't be sure her airway was clear unless he pinched her and made her cry out. He wonders whether we should have some liquid food on hand, something like Ensure, for the time when it becomes too dangerous to give her solids. June 5, 2000 There's a marked swelling on the sclera in the right corner of Linda's left eye. I've noticed for the past couple of weeks that she seems slightly cross-eyed, and I wonder whether the tumor is putting pressure on one of her eyes. Mike and Noella think that the tumor may have invaded her eyeball. It would have easy access down the optic nerve. Noella says she's seen some brain-tumor patients have their eyes nearly pushed from their sockets before they die. But today, again, Linda's awake enough for her medicated ice cream and for a delicious-smelling TV dinner of chicken marsala. She lay flat on her back with her eyes closed, opening her mouth for each spoonful. It's even more hard to tell, as Noella says, whether her eating is a reflex action or whether there may also be some cognitive process going on. Noella wants to talk about the liquid dexamethesone she will be giving to Linda subcutaneously once she can no longer be woken. In theory, a full "active treatment" dosage would keep her alive until she died of malnutrition and dehydration—up to a week, maybe more, she says. But would that be the best thing for her, she asks. We could also slowly 306

reduce the dosage, allowing brain swelling to increase, and bringing about her death sooner. Mike and I both say that until a month ago we hadn't expected any dexamethesone treatment after she lost consciousness. That we'd been surprised when the other nurse had assumed such treatment would be given. There's a long silence. Noella suggests that it would be cruel to allow Linda to go abruptly from the active dosage she's presently receiving to nothing—that even unconscious patients can experience pain. But that a "bridging," or tapered dosage could diminish pain without prolonging starvation and dehydration. I think I am writing this more clearly than Noella said it. When she leaves, Mike and I reflect on how uncomfortable and awkward Noella has suddenly become. He comments that nurses may create such awkwardness by anticipating and trying to avoid it. I'm not so sure. June 6, 2000 Linda is slightly more awake today than yesterday, but she's a little weaker. Mike once again manages to give her food and medication during the time she is disturbed by the home-care worker's efforts to change and wash her. But she is having difficulty chewing, as if she lacks the strength to chew. She struggles for up to five minutes with a mouthful. She's also having difficulty drinking from a straw—unable to suck strongly enough to draw the orange juice. Mike compensates by filling the glass only halfway and tipping it so that the straw is nearly horizontal. George phones. We are both scheduled to speak at the National Poetry Foundation conference in Orono, Maine, on the weekend of July i. He knows I am planning to drive there, and he proposes to fly to Toronto and drive the rest of the way with me. But he worries that I may not be able to go. Neither of us say why that might be. He decides he'll take the chance and book a Vancouver-Toronto ticket with a Montreal-Vancouver return. I am determined to go if it's even remotely possible—so many of my British Columbia friends will be there. I tell Mike about George's call, and he says he thinks there's a fifty-fifty 307

chance Linda will still be alive then. She could also stop eating tomorrow and be dead within a week. I go and sit with her. She is picking at her teeth with her left hand then holding her hand up as if to look at it. It's hard not to see this as conscious action. I take her left hand and she squeezes mine. She looks at me through barely open eyes, and without expression. Then she looks away. She takes her hand away and begins moving her arm restlessly up and down the bed. The left is the only arm she can move. Her breathing is labored, as it has been for the last few days. She moves her head from side to side, as if unable to make it comfortable. Of course, her whole body may be uncomfortable, and her arm and head the only parts she can move. CBC Television has been presenting a program on palliative care for the dying for the past two nights, partly occasioned by a newly released federal report. Mike and I sit watching while our very own palliative-care patient breathes tenuously a floor above us. Apparently there is a serious shortage of palliative-care beds and trained home-care workers for dying patients across the country. I remember that we were warned that we had to reserve a space early in the local palliative-care unit. I guess we've done a citizenry good deed in deciding to keep Linda at home until the end. The report recommends not only an expansion of such facilities but also paid leave for those who take time from their jobs to care for a dying family member. Not very many families would have the flexibility that my university teaching position has provided, or the luxury of having an unemployed biochemistry graduate like Mike to give informed and committed care. The dying patients presented on the program are all reasonably articulate— they're dying of something that doesn't affect the mind. A good rhetorical strategy by the program editors. One is dying of liver cancer, and he laments matter-of-factly that he can plan nothing because the doctors have no idea whether he will die in a week or in several more months. He is grateful to have a palliative-care room to die in. The camera pulls back to show a spartan hospital room. There are no interviews of family members, who would also be having difficulty looking ahead. I compare his 308

hospital room to Linda's room, with its queen-size bed, antique headboard, Persian carpets, and antique chairs. I think of her crying out as ambulance attendants attempted to carry her downstairs and away from it. June 7, 2000 No change in Linda so far today, in fact she looked relatively young and peaceful when I looked in on her this morning. You could have the illusion that she might abruptly wake up, stretch, step out of bed, and tell us what she was planning for us to do with her today. Dr. McCully called this afternoon—I nearly missed her. The brake caliper on the front right of my van broke as I was going out for groceries, and I had to leave the van at the nearby service station and walk back. Today is my mother's birthday. I spoke to her on the phone last night at her nursing home. She said I can now appreciate what she went through when my father died— troubles that climaxed six years later with her collapsing from overmedication and malnutrition. She's slightly right—I am already having trouble planning meals for myself, particularly with Mike and I rarely wanting to eat the same things. Tonight, however, Linda's fallen asleep before Mike can give her dinner. All she's had today is various flavors of ice cream and a little orange juice. June 8, 2000 I made a quick run tonight to the Eastern Townships of Quebec, to a dog show at Brome. A lot of rain on the way, and more while I was setting up my camp under a convenient wooden canopy at the fairgrounds where the show is being held. Phoned Mike, who told me that tonight Linda stopped being able to suck on a straw. He was baffled by how he was going to get any liquid into her. Then he discovered she could still manage to accept and chew ice cream, so he froze her orange juice into crystals and spooned them into her. The crystals began to melt before he could give all of them to her, so he ran downstairs, got ice and salt, and made a miniature freezer that refroze the juice in a pan beside her bed. He's not 309

too alarmed—we've had similar setbacks before, and we both know that she has a four-to-five-day reserve to live on once she stops eating and drinking. But how resourceful he is! June 9, 2000 Seizer won a Group second this morning, and there are even better judges for him tomorrow. I worked this afternoon on the paper—"Regressive Poetics of the 19605"—I've decided to present at the National Poetry Foundation meetings in Maine. A relief to have some free time to work, although the paper keeps leading back to death—the death of Al Purdy and the absurdly obsequious, self-serving memorial comments published in the days after by Susan Musgrave, Robert Bringhurst, Pat Lane, Dennis Lee. Did they want him to have killed poetry? Phoned home after my dinner this evening and discovered that Linda had been in extreme discomfort last night—had been unconscious but also writhing and groaning in pain. The room was warm—seventy-two degrees—but her body was cool, as if perhaps her circulation was slowing. Mike called the nursing team. Noella came and installed two of the subcutaneous syringes with butterfly valves and began giving her both liquid dexamethasone and a painkiller. There's clearly been some event involving the tumor—possibly it has blocked the ventricles and caused a painful buildup of intercranial pressure. Sara was also there. She flew in from Minneapolis, as planned, an hour or so before. They told me that Noella expected me to want to rush home, but they're not sure I should. Noella thinks Linda may have as little as forty-eight hours to live. They're not sure how useful it would be for me be home, except for myself. I've had too much wine with my dinner to think about what I want to do, or to drive. Seizer will be shown early tomorrow morning, so I'm going to phone home then and reassess things.

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June 10, 200o Linda's died. "Died," the letters read back to me. Died three hours after I wrote the last entry. Mike and Sara were with her, they say, talking to her as her breathing became increasingly rough and raspy, until it stopped in two long, almost pleasure-implying sighs. Sara woke me around 10 P.M. with word that Noella had just visited and thought that Linda at best had only hours. She apologized for phoning—recognizing that there was nothing I could do. I drifted back to sleep to be woken by her second call, at around 11:30.1 lay awake for most of the rest of the night, having a confused dream just before dawn. I was with Linda in my parents' house. She'd been ill but was on her feet again. I called to her, but she turned and said she had to go and disappeared down the hallway towards the bathroom and my old bedroom. When I woke I remembered that this resembled one of my last memories of my dad—him disappearing down that hallway in his pyjamas, joking about whether he'd be able to urinate. It was a week after his third prostate operation. I had flown back to Toronto that night thinking that he was getting better, and four days later he was dead. Early this morning Seizer won Best of Breed, as I'd expected. I called Sara and got phone numbers for the funeral home and for Linda's sister. Sara had already called John and Shirley. I feel terrible—headache, depressed, weary. I think I should come home but Sara and Mike are worried about me driving nine hours on no sleep. At noon Seizer wins first place in the Working Group, qualifying for the Best in Show competition at the end of the day. Some of my friends at the show have found out about Linda from Harold, Seizer's handler, and they've been coming around to where I am parked. They say I should stay for the weekend—"That's what Linda would want." It's a useful phrase. I'm not sure what she would want, or even if it matters. I call Susie, who is not surprised that Linda has died but, like me, is concerned about how to break the news to her mother. I say that I'd hoped to have been able to give Jackie a few days' warning, but Susie says that would have been bad too. She says Linda was absolutely 3n

June w, 2000.

right to have wanted to keep Jackie ignorant of her illness. That Jackie would have translated Linda's plight into her own—"poor me"—and she'd have been nothing but trouble. I phone Linda's lawyer and old colleague, David, who assures me that all of her old practice is in hand and comments how Linda had always seemed indestructible. It was a comment Susie had also made—that she'd seemed "a force of nature." Unfortunately, nature had other forces. It's time for Best in Show, an award that Seizer has never won and that most dogs—especially young dogs like Seizer—will never win. But the judge is one who has ranked Seizer highly twice before—a Best Puppy in Show two years ago, a Group first last spring. I allow myself a little hope. Paul Wirtz and Serge Guillet are there, partners who show their own Danes, and Lynn Arrand, a friend who breeds and shows basenjis. They all knew, and know about, Linda. They clap and cheer and whistle each time the judge calls on Seizer and Harold to perform.

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At the end the judge goes back to his table, gathers up the enormous rosette and turns back to the seven dogs. He ponders them for what seems like several minutes. Then he announces to the crowd: "I want the Great Dane." Harold is in tears as he runs up to the judge with Seizer, as is Lynn beside me. Me too. Serge and Paul have grim smiles, as if they're not sure how appropriate it is to be happy. But Serge is so obviously pleased that I hug him. Oh, how I wish I could take the rosette back to Linda. She'd have had to know what it was. It feels like too much is happening. I take Seizer back to my van and phone Sara and Mike with the ironic news, but it's not the same as phoning Linda. I wake Sara, who says she'd been asleep on her mother's bed. I phone my friend Carmen, who breeds and shows black Danes, and who won a Best in Show some ten years ago. I had revealed Linda's illness to her last month. I tell her first about Linda's death and then about Seizer's win. At first she can hardly believe their virtual coinciding. She thinks it must have some meaning. She says I must stay for the show tomorrow. June n, 2000 Dreamed last night that I was at Linda's bedside. She's lying flat on her back, in a loose-fitting nightie, fumbling with her breasts. She's been having some trouble, some swelling in her left breast. I try to check and make sure it's okay, but she tells me to leave her breasts alone. She evidently thinks I have more on my mind than her well-being. I comment that she's been saying things like that for too long. She smiles gently and says that maybe this is my fault or maybe it's hers. I love her for having said that. I notice that there are several ants and ant eggs on the breast, and I brush them away. Then I notice that there are ants laying eggs on her forehead. It rained all night and most of the morning. I slept mostly from 9 P.M. until 8 A.M. It was very cold. I sat in back of the van with Seizer, our little ceramic furnace on, rereading some of this journal. I lost track of time, and Harold had to come and alert me to bring Seizer for Breed. The lady who shows her own Doberman special and who won Group first over 313

Seizer on Friday stopped by to express her sympathy for Linda's passing and congratulations for Seizer's Best in Show. Like many people who congratulated me last night she thinks the two events must be divinely linked. How we hope. June 12, 2000 Mike and Sara are okay. I had a miserable drive back last night through incessant rain. They had to help the undertaker, they tell me, roll their mother's body onto his stretcher, which he then zipped over her like a body bag. All her limbs were loose and unruly. It was about three hours after she died, and an hour after Noella and Dr. McCully had come over to pronounce her dead. Mike and Sara want to hold our wake for Linda on Saturday afternoon rather than Sunday, because Sunday is Father's Day. John and Shirley will help us. I have to go the funeral parlor at 10 A.M.—it's a block away from our house. I need to phone Susie at Jackie's house. I rewrite the death notice for the newspapers one more time. The house is astonishingly quiet without Linda's TV running or home-care workers calling. Mike and Sara have cleaned up all the creams and medicines that were beside Linda's bed, and they've washed her sheets and the last of the towels and washcloths. They've done something with the stack of video tapes we had accumulated for heir to watch or listen to. We have to get the house tidy for Saturday. Sara says she will hire a crew of cleaners, but first I will have to put a thousand things away. At the funeral parlor they say they want me to come back in the afternoon and identify Linda's body. When I spoke to someone there on the weekend he was worried about how her body would be by Monday without being embalmed. I told him Linda was adamant about not being embalmed. But Dan, the young man who talks to Sara and me, is not worried about that today. The basement of the funeral home has been flooded by the rains and we cannot view any coffins. I have to bring Dan the death notice for the newspapers because, he tells me, newspapers accept them only from funeral homes. He has a boilerplate death notice, which most of his 3H

clients use. This explains why the same cliches—"beloved wife of," "loving father," "dear son," "sadly missed"—appear in so many of the notices. Back home I finish the death notice, create an e-mail list of close friends, and send it to them. I phone Pat Dibsdale at the English department at Western and ask her to put a brief notice about Linda on the department listserv. Sara and I go to the LCBO and buy a dozen bottles of wine for Saturday. I phone George. We go back to funeral parlor. Sara doesn't want to see her mother, but when I see Linda she looks more peaceful and younger than she's looked in weeks. It feels stupid talking to a corpse, but I still have things to say, and there isn't much alternative. No, I don't tell her about Seizer's Best in Show. I tell her I love her and I wish things had been better between us. I remember how often she's said the same thing to me. I guess this is a conversation. She looks so good I don't want her buried or cremated—a weird thought that I know people have sometimes acted upon. When I come out and tell Sara her mother looks okay, all things considered, she goes in to see her too. We go home and tell Mike that he may want to see her one last time, and he agrees, and Sara goes back with him.

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July 29, 2000 I've spent a lot of time on the road at dog shows since Linda died. I feel badly about how much I've left Mike and Sara to work things out on their own. Seizer's had another Best in Show, at an even larger show, and he'll probably remain far above Honey in the national standings for the rest of the year. I can't get used to Linda not being at home—things must have been so busy while she was dying that I didn't get a chance to miss her normal presence. I sure do now. I see the call-waiting light blinking on my phone and think, "Linda's not here, maybe she's called me." I tiptoe when I get up in the middle of the night so that I don't disturb her. I go out to buy a newly released wine and suddenly have the devastating realization that I'll never be able to show it to her. I almost turn away from the store. I cook myself a meal, using one of Linda's recipes, and it tastes good, but I don't enjoy it. I hardly notice the flavors. As much as possible, I seem to arrange to be away. I tell people that I know how to be alone on the road— how to cook for myself, how to busy myself—but I don't yet know how to be alone at home. "You could stay home and learn," one of my surprisingly astute dog-show friends tells me. I sort of agree. Except that when I start back home I often wonder where I'm going, and why. Is there a home at home? All three of us have been having more odd dreams. Mike dreams that his mother has come back, and that she is pissed off that we've assumed she was dead and had her cremated. "You've made a big mistake," she rages at him. I tease him that in his dream Linda is very much in character. He grins sadly. Sara dreams that she's required to take Linda's dismembered body from her room down to the street for garbage pickup—evidently reliving part of her last night with her mom and expressing a guilt similar 319

to Michael's about having acquiesced to her dying. I don't think she did. I've had more travel dreams. More homeless Frank? One begins with me sleeping on cobblestones in the far-left aisle of a Gothic cathedral in France. The kind of cathedral Linda would have insisted on visiting. On lighting candles for her dead half-sisters. Beyond a low stone wall behind me are graves of medieval knights and ladies topped with life-size reclining effigies. Every square foot of the ceiling and walls in front of me is intricately carved. I have the impression that Linda and I have bought this cathedral and that it's now our home, and I think how lucky I am. But then I realize this is just an illusion I've had during my uncomfortable sleep on the cobblestones. I consider whether cathedrals often come up for sale—maybe Linda and I could still get one. For I'm not really a hobo, even though passersby must think I look like one. I should try to find a better spot to sleep than this aisle, perhaps a pew. People are having to step over me. Maybe I should go to a hotel. I now notice that there are real homeless people sleeping between the graves behind me, their bodies blending in with the effigies. Morning com.es and I go outside and sit, with my head on my knees, on a bench near some grass and a river. I'm carrying all my possessions in a cardboard shoe box tied with string. There are a couple of other middleaged men sitting on the bench. A dog comes by and licks my ear. I pat it and it moves away. A spaniel of some kind. The other two men would have liked to greet the dog too, and one of them jokes tha.t as soon as you try to pet a dog it runs off. I get up from the bench and watch the dog and the young man who's with it go off together down the path. I wake up from the dream and I'm in our London house, and I think that this isn't the first time I've called Linda a bitch. A nice bitch. Or fell: that being with her was like being in a cathedral. Or wondered about being dead with her. Later I have a dream in which Mike and I are staying in a motel. A woman has been murdered in the unit next door, the end unit. The police have surrounded the motel and the sidewalk that runs along it with yellow tape, but as residents, seemingly the only residents, Mike and I can walk 320

on either side of the tape. Other people are supposed to stay back, on the lawn. We notice suspicious people loitering near the end windows of the murdered woman's unit, that they're looking in the window and may be planning to break in and tamper with evidence. The police aren't paying much attention, confining themselves to the motel office at the opposite end of the long narrow building. Among the people on the lawn is a young woman journalist who is just beginning her career. She is taking notes in a notebook and crossing some of them out and rewriting them. When I wake up I "know" at once that the murdered woman was Linda, and the police were her doctors who had seemed unable to keep her killer away. The young woman journalist was probably Sara, who is also near the beginning of her career and makes her home elsewhere. The motel perhaps suggests my uneasiness about whether or not our home ever was a "real" home. As I think more about that, I notice that the woman's having died in a different unit from the one Mike and I are staying in recapitulates the way Linda tended to separate her living space from the rest of our household. How in many ways she was a stranger to us. I shouldn't have written that. It was her mother who used to say that Linda was so different from the rest of the family—so bright, so assertive, so demanding of life, so intellectually curious—that she thought she'd brought the wrong baby home from the hospital. Bet I know how that made Linda feel. I never thought I'd brought the wrong woman to my home. Even in my dreams. I thought we'd each brought the right one to our home and been puzzled about why things between us were never really wonderful. Only sort of wonderful.

I keep remembering stories she told me. And thinking that if I don't remember them I will lose even more of her. How several times she told me that as a young child she managed to earn pocket money by begging scraps of lumber from the chair factory at the bottom of her street and 321

selling them door-to-door as firewood. That when she was eleven she borrowed an air rifle and went door-to-door offering to rid people of pigeons that were roosting in their eaves. Most of the pigeons she said she shot. She reached some of the young ones by ladder and wrung their necks. She said she gathered the bodies in a sack and took them a few blocks west to Vancouver's Chinatown and sold them as delicacies at the backdoors of Chinese restaurants. She'd been amazed since then that her parents didn't ask what she was doing. I remember her telling me also that shortly after she moved in with Heather and Bonnie, when she was fourteen, one of them developed an earache. They lived in an east-end house in the same run-down neighborhood as her parents. She was standing near a window heating a spoonful of almond oil with a match to treat the earache when the police broke down the door and slammed all three of them to the floor. They had been watching the house. They'd thought it was a house of teenage drugaddicted hookers. Linda always said she was a virgin until after a year of dating Roger. She said she liked Roger's obsessive military neatness. His never getting angry or unhappy. His well-planned route to graduate degrees through his Royal Canadian Navy commission. His ability to learn good taste in art and dress. She said she discovered later that she never saw him unhappy because whenever he was he would plan to disappear. That his good taste was without passion. She said that at a garden party she had once accidentally and exuberantly pushed his commander into a fishpond.

When I have been home I've been gradually sorting Linda's clothes and boxing most of them to give to the Diabetes Association, the charity Linda supported most frequently. Most are casual—dozens of cotton pants, sweatshirts, T-shirts, flannel pyjamas. Although I find she's also kept the mauve lame evening dress she was wearing that New Year's Eve she 322

rushed across the wardroom to kiss me. It's the only one she's kept from that decade. I've also cleaned out her medicine cabinet, which contained more bottles of those folk remedies for feeling depressed or upset or just mysteriously lousy. Remedies I recall now she was taking as early as 1995. I wonder again if she was feeling the effects of the tumor then and having no idea what it was. I keep thinking I may come across some surprise—some evidence that there was more to her life than I knew. But almost everything is routine— old lottery tickets, receipts from restaurants near her law office, wrapped cubes of sugar from the years when our young daughter was collecting such things, small bottles of shampoo from hotels she and I had stayed at in Europe. There's an unused condom in a purse she carried in the 19805. But it's a brand that she and I used. Beside it are random objects—a screwdriver, some AA batteries, a toenail clipper—that look like they were scooped into her purse when she was tidying one day, or perhaps packing things away before our year in France. When I clean out the last drawer—a whole drawer of large, utilitarian white cotton underpants—I feel let down. It feels as if she's left almost nothing—no mysteries, no messages, just a few bags and boxes of mundane objects. I've also been tossing out bags of her shredded law papers and sorting through the remaining paper—mostly handwritten notes, blank legal forms, and old letterhead. Again, nothing unusual—the odd casual note from a friend—until I come across a single blue sheet of paper on which she'd handwritten a list of twenty-six grievances she had against her mother and one against her father. She used quotation marks to highlight some of her mother's most offensive habitual comments. I mention the list to Sara, who tells me that the blue sheet came from an unusual notepad that Linda used in the early 19905 when she and Sara shared an apartment in Toronto. I'm flabbergasted that she could have been moved to write such a thing more than thirty years after leaving her parents' home. The sheet reads:

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1. 2. 3. 4.

Threats to send to "bad girls home"—fake phone calls. "Duchess"—"Look at her, thinks she's the queen of shit!" Not allowed to talk until she's finished singing. House a pigsty—me dirty—hair uncut.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Mother sitting in mess crocheting. Father alcoholic & abusive—fights. "Who do you want to live with?" No supervision—no direction re homework. Responsible for sister—the bike. [Linda had remembered being given a

10. n. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

used bicycle, but she was rarely able to enjoy it because her mother expected her to routinely babysit her sister.] Cooking from age 9. "You don't have 'nerves.' I'm the one ..." [Linda believed that her mother interpreted her ability to appear calm as a sign of inhumanity.] "You're driving me crazy. I'm going to go to Essondale [the nearby psychiatric hospital]." No control of sister who acted outrageously to boyfriends. Demeans my accomplishments to me, but brags [about: her] to friends— e.g. "The last thing I'd ever want to be is a lawyer" v. "My daughter the lawyer." "Smile pretty"—i.e. lie about how you feel. Didn't care when I left home at 14. Martyr number—[re] peaches—"Then I won't have any." Silent treatment—tight-lipped anger. [Linda recalled that her mother would try to punish her by not speaking to her for periods of three or four days.] Treatment of my father in old age & last illness—[his| dehydration etc.

Wouldn't let him come home [from hospital]. 20. Preferred to exist on welfare "mincome." 21. [Unconscious] [l]esbianism. 22. Never able to have friendship with more than one woman and insanely

23. 24. 25. 26.

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jealous of any other friend that woman had. "I went out with you on Linda's birthday—why do you need to be with Bob?" The pony. "Don't cough"—i.e. don't do anything that suggests you need nurturing from me. Embarrassed me in public—[by] inappropriate behavior. Twenty-six weeks allowance to buy a winter coat. [Linda recalled being given a weekly allowance by her mother, some of the money coming from

Linda's own earnings, and being told that she would have to buy her winter coat from it.] 27. Buy inappropriate [garish, tasteless, or out of style] dress for me then go on & on about how much she had to do to get it for me.

The list, and the thirty-odd years of brooding behind it, suggests to me again that much of the turbulence Linda found in her adult relationships— her feeling that things could be "better"—had little to do with those relationships but stemmed instead from her continuing rage and indignation towards Jackie for sabotaging her childhood and damaging her father. I'm amazed that she and I managed to have any kind of satisfying family life together. That she was as attentive a mother as she was. And I'm made to understand again why she could allow her own mother absolutely no place in her dying. August 3, 2000 This morning I dream that I am in a large, carpeted room, a room that vaguely resembles our Toronto bedroom in the early 19705, when Linda suddenly appears, slim, nude, as if emerging from a shower. She has her arms over her head, and she's putting a bobby pin into her auburn hair, which is long and done up, as in my 1971 photos. Her calves and thighs and torso are covered in old bruises, which I recognize as ones she incurred during her illness, when her balance was poor and she would fall trying to get out of bed. But they are healing now that her struggle against her tumor is over, and her body has already regained an astonishing amount of muscle tone. I notice especially that her hips are slim, her abdomen tight, with only one slight fold beneath her navel from her two pregnancies, her waist trim, and her breasts firm and young-looking. With her arms raised, she looks a lot like the Venus de Milo. I am amazed. But not all the blue marks on her torso are bruises. On her left side, curving down from her shoulders towards her navel, are three or four rows of blue, seemingly tattooed, geometric Haida designs, each about two-by-three inches. They are very attractive. I am overjoyed to see her. I rush over and put my arms 325

around her gently. "I love you," I say. "Oh, Linda, I love you," and I caress her back with my left hand and her left side and breast with my right. I am careful not to touch the nipple, lest I cause my affection to seem reductively sexual. She puts her arms around me gently, as if serenely or patiently accepting my affection. Yet I can also hear her breathing quickening. I wake up suddenly, sexually aroused, and momentarily think that she must be still alive, and nearby. Then I realize I've been dreaming—the most beautiful vision, I think, I have ever dreamed. My stunningly sensual Linda of the sixties and seventies. The Linda I had both learned from and aestheticized. I want to understand everything I can about what I've just seen. I keep trying to repicture her—this Linda, who was in the process of being healed by death. Being restored to health as the mother of our two young children? Or being restored specifically as the young woman I had expected to return to me in April of 1975 from her father's funeral? The Haida markings seem to point directly to her father, whose: only playmates when he was a young child in i88os Vancouver were Native, and who, when I met him in 1971, could still speak Chinook, the West Coast Native trade language. Do these markings mean that I should have tried harder to accept that part of her history? Do they mean it was a part of her beauty? It and the gun she once pointed? I reflect that I often had trouble saying "I love you" to Linda in later years. That Linda's acceptance of me then often seemed more gentle than passionate.

I know I began to make up a Linda to myself that 1968 New Year's Eve I met her. Fantasizing her as a lover, a gracious companion, Remembering her alertly poised ballerina's body. Her gentle, expressive speech. The ease and joy with which she could quote poetry. I didn't know or want to know about a troubled Linda, or an effectively motherless Linda, or an angry Linda. Or even an incomprehensibly married-to-Roger Linda. The strained elegance of the officers' mess that evening, and of other military 326

college events at which I would encounter Linda during the next year, hinted not at all at her calamitous and untended childhood. Even when we were married and she told me about those early years, I discounted them, as if she'd invented herself anew when she left home, or when she married Roger, or when she went back to school at nineteen, or when she took up with me. When her life partly resumed its old chaos—and perhaps I am now making her up again—after her father died, I sometimes accused her of being a person I didn't know, of having lied to me about who she was. To my surprise, she would say that was partly true. But that she couldn't go back to being only the person I had thought she had been. She wept. In later years she often wept when she said she loved me.

The day my death notice for Linda appeared in the Globe and Mail, a reporter from the paper phoned to say they wanted to write an article about her. I'm not sure why—perhaps the unusual combination of things she'd done in her life intrigued them, or her playful claim that she was one of the world's last serious readers. "The ballerina who was a lawyer," they titled the piece, which they published the next day. She'd have complained that they had the roles in the wrong order. Sara helped me find the photograph that accompanied it. She selected one I'd taken in 1971, in which Linda's holding a large book but glancing away from it down to the right. Perhaps she's comparing texts, or looking up a reference. Linda as reader. At least that's how the photo appeared in the image Sara scanned from it, which the Globe published. But in the full photograph the image of Linda reading occupies only the upper right quarter. The full photo shows that it is the dreaded Christmas Day. The floor that Linda is sitting on and looking at is strewn with Christmas wrapping, empty boxes, and new toys. Little Michael is in the lower left, delightedly pumping a musical top. Linda as mother. A visibly split Linda trying to position herself both within Christmas, beside her children beneath the Christmas tree, 327

Linda reading, 15171.

Linda and Michael, Christmas 1971.

328

and at the same time within the private world of reading. The scene takes place two and a half years before her father dies and she begins removing herself more and more from such family space.

Linda told me several times that when Susie was three or four she developed a delusion that Linda was a superhero, like Cat Woman or Supergirl. She thought Linda's secret name was "Star." That she went out at night and saved the world. Linda would find Susie hiding in her closet, determined to catch her changing into her superhero costume and flying from her second-floor window, a window that overlooked Vancouver harbor. When Linda tried to force her to come out, Susie would beg her to confirm her other life. "Oh, please, Star, you can trust me, Star, I'll never tell anyone, Star," she would implore. The story tells something about how important Linda had become to Susie amid the confusion that was their family. But it also tells something of the effect Linda and her determined enactments of strength, reliability, and aristocratic grace could have on people. She had that kind of effect on me. Now I wonder how much I have been misrepresenting her here, perhaps pushing her towards strength and consistency, which the contradictory identities that were Linda could never sustain. Or blaming her for that failure always to be my "Star." I would love to get her "right." Or at least at least to have shown enough Lindas that readers—especially our children—could piece together some understanding of her. "Who was Linda?" I asked that question early in this journal. I'm not sure she knew. I'm not sure she always liked the answer. I'm not sure she always remembered. Some of her past, including parts of her childhood, was probably stories she had embroidered to make herself appear slightly stronger, slightly bolder than she'd perhaps been able to be. A sure shot with an air rifle. A mother-humiliator with repartee. "Star." She needed those stories. Yet this journal's Linda is also inevitably my Linda. Remembered through 329

the incidents and the stories and their details that I've remembered, or wanted to remember, judged and filtered by my hopes and pleasures and disappointments with her. "You take too big an interest in me," she often said. She would say that to me now. She wouldn't let me buy lingerie for her. "You want to own me," she said. "Let me surprise you," she said.

I've spent a lot of time talking on the phone to Susie—usually calling her to ask how her mother is or how she's doing herself. Also because I like talking to the only other person I know who came close to "knowing" Linda. I don't mention "Star"—I know from conversations Linda and I had with her long ago that Susie has no recollection of that person. But Susie does keep talking about her childhood with Linda. She suggests that their mom was not as bad as Linda imagined and that their dad was a lot worse. She talks about the atmosphere of violence she remembers in their home—the repeated arguments between their mom and dad. She says their father was abusive—not so much in his acted-out violence as in his belligerence, his threatened violence. He'd push people, raise his fists. She says they never did anything together as a family after she was about seven years old—that her mom had her friend Marge, and her father had a variety of buddies. I remember that I've never seen a childhood photograph of Linda with her mom and dad together. Or did they have no one to take such a photo? In another phone call she insists that her father was a "true alcoholic"—that he took his first drink when he got up to light the furnace at 5:30 A.M. and his last at bedtime. She says that when she began dating she tried to keep her boyfriends from entering the house because her dad was likely to offer them a drink and keep them there indefinitely. In another call Susie says that Linda told her while she was in her early twenties and married to Roger that if she didn't feel "manic" she felt angry, and that she wished there was some other way to feel. Of course there 330

Linda and Susie, 1949.

was—it was feeling depressed, which she often did during her life with me. I wonder if that first New Year's kiss was for her a "manic" moment. Or our rush to the Tillicum Outdoor. These are big words, however, with clinical meanings. For Linda, "manic" meant exuberant, fearless, optimistic, mischievous, happy. Not a bad way to be. I especially loved that Linda—except when she was mischievous and fearless with someone else. And even then I had to admire her zest and fearlessness. "Depressed"? That meant unhappy, unable to see an enjoyable way forward. A bit like me now. The depressions were mere side effects of her amazing hope— her hope that life could be continuously rich, satisfying, thrilling, splendid. As splendid as that of her world-traveling grandfather. I would still rather be with Linda and her high expectations and capacity for delight 33i

Linda with her father, 1951.

han with someone who was never depressed. A Linda who dreamed, then died a little, then dreamed again.

It would be unfair to say that Linda was not a feminist, although I suppose she was at best a feminist without theory. She was impressed with theory in the abstract but, like many bright people, she was wary of its touching her. She discovered Freud, she claimed, when she was thirteen or fourteen and borrowed numerous volumes of his collected works, including The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, from the Vancouver Public Library at Main and Hastings. But she wanted neither me nor others to turn any of his ideas against her illusion that she 332

Linda with her mother, 1951.

consciously directed her own life and had produced her own identity. Although in tender moments she would sometimes confess to me that such self-direction was an illusion. Or say that I shouldn't be fooled by her pretense of self-confidence. And in turbulent, high-romantic moments she would claim to want to be out of control, to prefer being in the throes of incomprehensible, even self-destructive, passion. And mock me for preferring Pride and Prejudice to her own nineteenth-century favorite, Wuthering Heights. She politely respected the life choices of individual lesbians, but she saw lesbianism itself as a weakness—as the refuge of defeated women, for whom she had a generalized contempt, as she did for her mother. As if "strong" women were those who could, like her, stand up to the challenges of male-chauvinist culture and heterosexuality. Who had a male-centered notion of strength. "Lesbianism" is twenty-first in her list of complaints against her mother, but at most Jackie had deep yearnings for a woman's 333

affection and friendship—something that should have come as no surprise to Linda, considering what she knew of her mother's childhood. Most feminist theorists whom I've read do not understand this as lesbianism. But when I would point such things out to Linda, or when I'd point out that Jackie, with her father who had been killed at Passchendaele, her mysterious adoption, and her alcoholic mother, was an understandable product of the devastation of family life wrought by the First World War, she would agree but then ask what good such an insight could do her. Could it give her back her childhood? Only she could compensate herself for that childhood. Her favorite area of law was corporate and commercial, but she complained that corporations overwhelmingly preferred male lawyers, and that a woman could get little significant work there. Most women lawyers were pushed by the structure of the profession, she said, into a new women's "ghetto" of family law, or else into the criminal-law niche of defending male sex offenders. She also complained that workaholic male lawyers set the workload and fee norms for the profession and pushed up the cost of the mandatory "errors and omissions" insurance. They would work fourteen-hour days, six days a week, and in their haste and fatigue they'd make four times as many errors as women like hex, who preferred six-hour days and five-day weeks. The male-dominated Law Society refused to prorate the insurance, so women like Linda had to pay the same twelvethousand-dollar annual fee as one of the high-risk workaholics. Had to pay for their mistakes. Moreover, the workaholics' fees could easily cover the high office rental and secretarial costs in downtown Toronto; Linda's rarely did. Yet when I made the feminist suggestion that such patterns implied systemic discrimination against women by making a male career model compulsory, she bridled and said no, this was just the way things were in law and business, and when more capable women entered those fields things would get better. In his book The Soul of the Law Benjamin Sells says that forty-one percent of all female lawyers are unhappy with their careers; twenty-eight percent of male lawyers are similarly unhappy. Twenty-five percent of 334

lawyers suffer from depression, more than three times the rate in the general population. Out of the 105 professions Sells surveys, lawyers rank first in reporting depression. In another book, Gender in Practice, a study of Toronto lawyers, John Hagan and Fiona Kay write that more women lawyers are unhappy with the legal profession than men lawyers are because women's attempts to balance work and private life, while enduring lower pay and less recognition, often lead only to despondency or depression. I'm sure Linda did not read these books. On the other hand, when the fourteen young women were gunned down at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in December 1989 Linda saw instantly that they had been killed by misogyny and by the misogynist attitudes and language habits that had helped shape their killer, and she railed at our national daily newspaper, the Globe and Mail, for suggesting otherwise. She knew that she could have been one of the victims. Perhaps her most personally feminist moment was just before her father took ill. When she asked Margaret Atwood, whose writing I had criticized, to participate in her summer 1975 Northwest Territories reading tour. "I am not Frank," she told her, and Peggy had replied that she hadn't expected her to be.

Her life was in many ways shaped by the feminist struggles and hopes of the 19605 and 19705. In 1963 she became pregnant by her then boyfriend Roger, and she had a back-alley abortion rather than let him know she was pregnant and have him offer to marry her. If he was to marry her, as he did the next year, it should be because he wanted to be married to her. I won't repeat the details, although she did tell me. She had to deal with the last part of the procedure herself, alone, on a toilet seat. Of the most recent generation to have no access to safe abortion, she was also of the first generation to have access to birth control pills, and to the 19605 promise of unfettered enjoyment of her own sexuality. And of the most recent generation to be able to experiment without fear of AIDS. Yet her sexuality was never something she could simply enjoy, although intellectually she aimed for that. She had avidly read the Kinsey reports 335

and Havelock Ellis before I met her. Read the liberationist arguments of Masters and Johnson in the early seventies. Maybe the promise of unfettered enjoyment was, like her belief in self-direction, also an illusion. Maybe family ties and memories, or the competing and changing social meanings that culture gives to our sexualities, continue to make our sexual experiences relational to other parts of our lives, despite whatever ideal we may think we glimpse of disconnected pleasure. She wanted to believe that her enjoying sex with one man did not imply that she could not love or enjoy sex with, or have a continuing commitment to, another. She believed she should be able to have adventures and also a rewarding home life—much like she thought she should be able to be a successful lawyer and have a rewarding home life. I think there were a lot of women of her generation who shared those beliefs. Yet, for her, adventure was so often burdened with other motives—to pay back Roger in 1967 and 1969, to open up the narrow domesticity of our marriage in 1975, or to punish someone for her inevitably having to return home. And the adventure could be complicated by the glowing stamps on unanswered letters. For lovers, she seemed to choose men she hoped were unlikely to engage another area of her life. Or to threaten to take her from our family. Who could be abruptly forgotten. She had her tubes tied sometime in the 19805, perhaps as part of a fantasy, or a last stab at sexual liberation, or a gesture of despair. There could be such sadness in Linda, but correspondingly such determination to make things right for herself. As when she began saying "But that's all right" whenever she noticed signs that she was dying. I wonder again about the enormous need to be loved that her mother's neglect of her, and later contempt for her, must have created. Not just the usual recurring Lacanian feeling that life should somehow be richer, that we should somehow have "more"—a feeling we all may be haunted by-—but the bitter, visceral, body knowledge that some primal, fundamental, unconditional love and care had been brutally withheld from her. That the child Linda could be loved only by herself—that she could only have herself for a mother. That bitter knowledge must have been the root of her stubborn 336

self-sufficiency, of her flailing with her fists at Mike and me as we supported her on her last descent of our stairway. "You're no good," she shouted. It wasn't us she was shouting at; it was some version of her mother. She was sure even then that she deserved better.

We are all going to die. The hours or days or years between the present moment and our deaths grow shorter for all of us as I write. Medical science tries to stretch that time and make its quality better than it might otherwise be. A tumor patient like Linda differs from many of the rest of us in that she knows roughly when she will die, and—despite Dr. Fisher's grim humor—by what likely cause. At least she does in the current state of medical science. Did Linda have adequate care? She had dedicated doctors, two of whom, Dr. Fisher and Dr. Macdonald, are among the leading international researchers in brain-tumor treatment. She had kind, well-meaning nurses and home-care workers. But the underfunded public medical system in effect where we live probably shortened her life and made much of the home care she received amateurish, even though kindly given. The underfunding nearly prevented her from seeing a neurologist and being diagnosed—it was just luck and a persistent GP that allowed her to be diagnosed in April rather than September, when she would probably have been close to death. After she was diagnosed she still had to wait two months rather than the recommended four weeks for treatment to begin. When I think of these events, I again find myself angrily wishing painful, lethal tumors on all the government members who have allowed our medical systems to become so overburdened. No, I'm not a nice guy. But I believe I'm still worthier than them, and Linda ten times so. Underfunding meant that there was no private ward available for Linda, even though our medical insurance covered one, when she went into the hospital for her biopsy. Underfunding likely explains the unforgivable 337

tardiness of the Delaware pathologist who controls admission to the joint chemotherapy/radiation-treatment trial, a tardiness that may have cost Linda a chance at the most effective treatment. "Contracting out" and "privatization"—both of which are responses to underfunding—brought Linda home-care workers who had no idea of how to change an adult's diaper, or how to turn an adult patient in bed, and in one case no understanding of the thoroughness necessary to remove excrement from a woman's crotch. Half of the home-care workers who attended Linda were capable of little more than assisting Michael or me in doing the tasks they were supposed to know how to do. These were nice people who seemed to have been given at best token (low-cost) training.

In early August of 1990 Linda decided to take Sara on a "girl's trip" to Britain to attend the annual series of Royal Albert Hall music performances known throughout Britain as "the Proms." As usual, she booked a room at the Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly Circus, close to the theaters. The highlight, they said when they returned, had been hearing the young cellist Yo-Yo Ma. But Linda also went to a number of plays, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical, Aspects of Love. She brought back the soundtrack CDs, which she immediately began playing for us, suggesting that the play was uncommonly moving, wise, and bea.utiful. I listened patiently, but all I could hear was some pleasantly catchy tunes, some interesting piano playing, and an updating of some of the cliches of tragic love. Although she was still spending her weekdays in the small apartment in Toronto that she shared with Sara, I must have heard Linda play that soundtrack fifty times in the next three months. She listened to it quietly, tenderly, nostalgically. Something in Webber's play had moved her extraordinarily—perhaps its message that passionate love is the most significant experience in life—"Love changes everything," the theme song repeti338

tively declares. "Nothing in the world will ever be the same." At least twice in her life such abrupt change had happened to her. Or perhaps the play's other message that the process of love, however brief, is more important than its outcome—you live a dream you know will die. Or perhaps the play's poignant contrast between Rose's brief, doomed, sexual happiness with the impetuous seventeen-year-old Alex, eight years her junior, and her later domestic and intellectual contentment with his worldly wise uncle, George, thirty-three years her senior. She marries George and remains with him, bearing their daughter, building a life, until his death. George is sympathetic to Rose's almost uncontrollable attraction to Alex, and later, when he becomes elderly, he is sympathetic to her need to take a lover and passionately declares before his death at seventy-five that he himself has always lived for love—"Hand me the wine and the dice," the chorus later celebrates him. Or perhaps Rose's affection for her mucholder husband, and their daughter Jenny's delight in him, recalled for Linda her childhood with her elderly father and her regret that they had not loved each other better. Or gave her a glimpse of the breadth and depth of love a family like hers might have offered. Indeed, more love in her childhood might have "changed everything." I didn't enjoy Linda's listening to that music. Her bringing it back from a trip to England reminded me vaguely of things she'd once brought back from Vancouver and Belize. Rose's devoted but largely unromantic fifteenyear relationship with George sounded too much like Linda's later years with me. The idea that sexual pleasure can be intense only when the two lovers risk all else they value—Alex sings, "Love . . . bursts in and suddenly / All our wisdom disappears; all the rules / We make are broken"— struck me as naive and self-destructive. It didn't describe my own sexual happiness with Linda, which had always felt both impulsive and wise. But what I recall most about Linda's obsessive listening to that soundtrack—during our meals, or sitting alone in our TV room in front of the stereo, or in her car on a cassette copy she had made—was its nostalgic, elegiac quality. There would be no further romantic love for her—"Life goes on, 339

love goes free," several of the characters sing, with supposedly admirable diffidence. The play's songs were the sound of the surrender of one of her dreams. Perhaps she knew that at some point in her life, like Rose, she had given up her Alex to build a friendship and partnership with her George. Perhaps she believed she would never attract a man again. I despaired that I had never loved her enough. Then, as abruptly as she did so many other things in her life, she stopped listening to that music. Today I discover that even the two CDs have vanished. It's hard now not to think of the music stopping as another part of her death. Three years later she announced she was winding up her law practice and moving to London full time. Yet, despite the end of the music, the end of her law practice, and the hours of life-canceling games of solitaire she began playing on her computer, she continued to make up dreams—at least those dreams that there would be a villa in France, that she'd have another obedience dog to train to its championship, that the Bordeaux futures we were buying for drinking in 2020 would be as amazingly delicious as the wine writers promised, and that I would be there with her to taste and exclaim about them. She had given up a lot of herself during her life—her ballet career, her downhill skiing, her sailing, and now her law practice and an ambiguous music. Parts of us die, I think she knew, and are remade throughout our lives. Much like her brain, which reprogrammed itself after the first mostly successful radiation and chemotherapy treatments, she expected to live and remember.

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Death Notice, the Globe and Mail, June 13, 2000

DAVEY, Linda, nee McCartney. At home after a lengthy illness, June 9, 2000. Born 1944, Linda grew up on the east side of Vancouver where she attended Britannia High School and taught and danced ballet professionally, 1958-62. She married poet Frank Davey in 1969, and gave birth to their children Michael and Sara in 1970 and 1971. After graduating from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1979, she articled with Milrad and Agnew, and practiced law independently in Toronto until 1994, specializing in art law and civil litigation. Linda viewed herself as one of a diminishing number of serious readers of literature. She worked as a writers' agent in the early 19708, organizing the first writers' tour of the Northwest Territories, and journeying to rural Belize to bring the last of Charles G.D. Roberts's manuscripts and photograph collections back to Canada. She was a member of the editorial board of Coach House Press from 1975-86, where she edited books by Richard Huyda, Paul Quarrington, George Bowering, David McFadden, and Robert Priest, and fiercely resisted attempts to transform the press into a general publisher. She was a founder, patron, and director of Partners in Research. In the 19905, in London, she trained and showed two Great Danes to obedience titles. Tough, modest, and generous to the end, Linda is deeply missed by Frank, Michael, and Sara, her sister Susan McLeod of Medicine Hat, and brother Av McCartney and mother Jackie McCartney of Vancouver. Donations in Linda's name may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society (www.cancer.ca), Partners in Research (www.pirweb.org), or the Great Dane Health Foundation of America ([email protected]).

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