Faye's Feedback

 Waiting through the pain... On January 18th I began part two of my writing course with Wilma Derksen. A lovely one morning a week zoom call with many aspiring writers across North America and even Mexico. Wilma leads us with discussion and presents a powerpoint presentation. At the end, she gives us assignments to work on, and we turn those in at the end of the week. A deadline is helpful in avoiding procrastination in a writing project. I was able to get most of my first draft of my autobiography done in the first 8 week course. A miracle! My instructor Wilma lost her husband Cliff to gall bladder cancer in May of 2022. I emailed her recently to let her know that we just found out that my own husband Darrell has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It is so similar to her own story. Due to loss of nurses at the St. Boniface Hospital, my husband spent four nights in cramped quarters in the emergency ward. He slept on a narrow stretcher with a bright fluorescent light on the ceiling above hi...

Sixty-five years of life is the line that was just crossed when my mother retired from nursing and my father died. We bought a huge cake shaped like a nurse to celebrate her grand career, and put part of it in the freezer to eat another day. A few months passed, and then my dad was due for a quadruple by-pass surgery at the St. Boniface Hospital here in Winnipeg. I remember the night before the surgery, he didn't want to see me, as it would be too emotional for him. He said last words to my mother. Then the next morning we got a call and saw him for the last time in post-surgery. He was drowning in his own blood that wouldn't clot. In the following years, I moved my mom to a new apartment, and started a long process of surgeries, cancer, and the eventual take-over of dementia. I just turned sixty-five. The passage of that year does not mean that it's the beginning of the end of my life, but it does make me think. I plan to finish my autobiography soon, for my children to ha...