Montreal: The report. A prose poem about getting there, what happened and how we felt.

Montreal: The report. A prose poem about getting there, what happened and how we felt.

I. The way up

I knew going in that everything I saw was deceptive, and that things would get worse -- that the white afternoon sun was false as it dipped behind dappled white pines, then surrendered behind a mountain.

The sun was false because it was the cool, white sun of winter, not the hot, yellowed sun of summer, and I could not trust it to warm me. As the afternoon wore on, the temperature dipped, and I climbed high in the Green Mountains toward my storybook Vermont town.

The roadside waterfalls were now frozen with clichéd tears as they stood beside roadside lakes, frozen with dead and dying tree trunks, which stood upright and bold, like people caught in a moment of horror, caught drowning in a frozen lake. You know the frozen tundra needs to thaw, but you don't know when that will happen.

On the apex of the Green Mountains lightly dusted with a confection of white, were the hills: I saw a woman lying on her side. I saw her shoulders, breasts and hips as she was rolling toward her lover for a last morning kiss, a memory of the night before, the night before that, and the night before that -- before everything was shuttered up for the night, shuttered up for life, then shuttered up for good, leaving only cold lips, cold hips, stony silence.

And I thought of my stepmother.

Gazing down at my storybook Vermont town, I stole a furtive glance, as I always do, to see the pristine, white steeple and tiny, gingerbread cottages dotted along the valley below. You know you've seen this same town on Calendars. It is true. Myth exists here.

Listening first to Country, Rock, and Christmas Songs, then as radio waves faded, I put the CDs on loud: First Abba, then I tried all the others, but nothing hit the spot quite right. Then, my favorite Christmas piano classics from years' past -  Danny Wright, and I sang Ave Maria the rest of the way up, knowing then as now, that everything I saw was deceptive -- and that things would get worse, much worse, as the white afternoon sun met the white afternoon moon before the sun dropped cold, dark and sudden to the blackening horizon below.

And I thought of my stepmother.

The snow and traffic in Montreal made the Byzantine directions seem easy.  I kept the dome light on to read the Google Maps directions. Ninety minutes was plenty of time to go about 15 miles into the City then back out again, singing, singing, singing.

Not knowing what I'd find or whom, but knowing I had to go, to discover 30 years and more of memories, some lost, some found, some remembered, some never known to me before.

Once at my sister's house, a tiny bungalow with her American boyfriend, I fell asleep on the couch while her folk band played in the back, and Toby the Sheltie tried to French kiss me as I watched Toronto Dance Theatre.

II. Services

A. The Unitarian Church.

We have been here before. Not this same Unitarian Church, for an organist burned down the centuries-old original in downtown Montreal some years back. But we have been at a funeral here in the old Church.

This church, this beautiful church in Westmount, is now our cultural church home in Westmount, former land of the Anglophiles, like us. People who are native English speakers or native speakers of languages other than French. We are not Francophones, not native Quebecoises.

The Unitarian Minister is a woman from New York and Boston. Flowers, candles, and photos dotted the room. The musicians played; they are a pianist, violinist and a flautist. The flautist is my sister's flute teacher, who occasionally winked at my sister, my sister whose eyes misted as she sat next to me in the front row.

Musicians played, memories were shared and words of comfort said.

Candles of memory were lit for Barbara, and for my father.

This service, on December 9^th, also marked the day my father died on December 7^th, 1971.

For some or many, I imagine the service passed in surreal unreality,  appearing as if people merely mouthed words while the shock of disbelief hung over words that were frozen in horror.

At one time, this had seemed to me to be reality, too.

Barbara's  lung cancer overtook her life so quickly, so soon after she entered the private nursing home.

Many came.

Professors and students she worked with, other ex-Patriots from Europe and Eastern Europe who came to live in North America, some staying in Montreal, some moving to Toronto, some moving to the US.

Friends of family members came.

People I'd not seen in years greeted me.

The flag at McGill, where she'd been an Associate Professor in Pharmacology since 1968 - until a few years ago - was at half-mast.

We ate tiny salmon sandwiches on wheat, drank a spot of Herbal (pronounce the H, as we are in UK-English now) tea.

***

The snow continued all day and night. It was not far from Westmount to the place where my father's urn was and where Barbara's urn also would be placed.

Two limos carried 11 of us to Mt. Royal Cemetery, on the top of Mt. Royal. It took two hours to drive the 2 miles, and a full hour for the rear-wheel drive limos to lumber up the steep hill of the mountain.

We got to the cemetery very late, but it was still light.

The snow seemed deceptively light and fluffy as we stood at the grave. It seemed serene, peaceful, fitting. It is difficult to express the community shared at the grave.

The final words. The sharing glances, even in the cold and snow.

How ironic that in these final moments, serenity and peace prevails.

My stepbrother clutched tightly to his breast the green felt bag that carried the rectangular urn. He then used the long ropes of the green felt bag to lower it into the grave. We then dipped our fingers into the receptacle of sand, and spread sand in the grave.

***

I saw people I'd seen last in Poland when I was Kira in 1971, when people only spoke Polish before they moved to Canada, most of them moved to Toronto.

Some I'd not met before because they were away when I was in Poland. I met a fabulous cousin, the husband of my stepmother's cousin, a curator of a famous museum, because I'd not met him before when I was in Poland, as he was on an archeological dig at the time.

Vodka, wine, coffee, food. Wine, food, wine, food, wine. Sharing. Sharing. Sadness, grief.

Hearing the stories of Barbara's life. Her parents were both teachers. Her father, Antony Dobiscewski, was a teacher in the Ghetto and a member of the Communist Party. It was this fact that led to his arrest and his later execution by the Nazis.

Barbara had wanted to become a ballerina, like so many little girls, but it was her father who convinced her to try her hand at Math and Science. He was a Math teacher.

A school in Warsaw is named after him.

My sister and stepbrother found an old photo of Barbara they'd never seen before, of her at 27, a beautiful young woman with bright red hair and brown, doe eyes, looking up at the world and what it has to offer her. There is hope and optimism in her face. Remarkable for 1952, so soon after WWII and what she went through, even forced labor in a German factory.

(As soon as I get a copy of that photo, I will share it).

B. McGill.

One of Barbara's colleagues organized a service in the Department of Pharmacology of Therapeutics, where her colleagues shared their memories of Barbara. She was a teacher in life, a teacher in her heart. Teaching is also close to the heart in every one of her daughter/step daughters.

I will be writing a separate article on this service, primarily for the colleagues and family members who were there. Some colleagues had Googled my father's name and had seen my articles on him - particularly "From Cowboy to Scientist" and wanted me to write more about him and to write more about Barbara.

III. The way back

I could see that not only was everything frozen, but that it would remain frozen for some time.

The foot of snow in Montreal, the inches of snow and ice on my car.

Thankfully, my sister's boyfriend de iced my door locks and cleaned off my car.

My younger sister's boyfriend is a man some years older than her and an American (that was the kicker for my sister). This man had served in the US Army just before Vietnam, and -- like our father, is a Country boy at heart, from NY state and North Carolina. Like our mother, he smokes cigarettes, plays Spanish Guitar, and is named Billy (our mother was Billie).

My sister had been married to a native Canadian, a very good man and an excellent provider, a Scottish Canadian who now lives in the US. But for those of us who came to Canada as a teenager, the pull towards the US is very strong. She decided she needed an American.

Driving was slow through the slush out of the city into Iberville, the way back toward Vermont.

Along the roadside were iced trees I knew would eventually melt, but not in my Montreal lifetime.

The iced glare of everything crystalline made sunglasses a necessity, in this tinsel-town mythic interpretation of frozen grief, feelings too shut down or too far down to surface.

The great thaw eventually comes to everyone.

Twenty years after my father's death, I cried. That was the last time I cried.

Margaret Atwood was correct in her essays in Survival in saying that in many countries, the dominant theme in literature is man against man, but in Canada, the literary theme is always man against nature.

In Canada, there is nothing else. It is man against nature.

At some level, it is always about man against nature.

My personal frozen tundra did not match the iced grey, near perma-frost of the Canadian climate. Mine was thawing, even as I passed Vermont squalls and New Hampshire ice storms, mine was thawing. Once again I passed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial bridge, just over the line in Vermont. Vermont is a state that cares.

I continued to sing Ave Maria the way back, knowing forgiveness will come. I t may come slowly, but it will come.

Understanding more about my stepmother is helping the thaw come to an early spring.