Last night, I was writing a post about having had a particularly bad day while Christmas shopping. It was a post about struggling with grief over the holidays, about the heartache that comes in those moments when you’ve gotten caught up in the holiday spirit and forgotten that something – that someone – is missing and then suddenly remembered and OOF. It was a post – again, again – about my dad. I struggled to write it. I always struggle when I write about him. I was wondering, as I always do, why I persist. I was feeling sad.

Just as I was finishing it, I heard a small voice from the other room, singing, in very high, measured tones, hallelujah.

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I’m Canadian, so I celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago, but still, it’s hard to ignore all the cheerful goodwill and gratitude in the air when American Thanksgiving rolls around. Also, the pie. That’s all anyone has been able to talk about this week: PIE, pumpkin or otherwise. And stuffing and turkeys and liquor. Oh, and gratitude.

Gratitude, like appetite, is contagious. So, herewith, an account of my thanks, the things for which I am grateful (not, please note, in order of importance):

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I don’t believe in petitionary or intercessory prayer. I’ve written about my reasons for this at length, but it boils down to this: I don’t believe in, can’t believe in, a God who responds to such prayer. As I said some months ago, ‘why should God help us find a cure for cancer, and not for muscular dystrophy? Find one lost child, and not another? Help the Red Wings win while leaving children dying in sub-Saharan Africa? If God is a god who lets bad things happen, the only way that I can understand that is if the point of letting bad things happen is to compel us to cope with pain and heartbreak and evil ourselves, alone, to better understand those things. And that idea of a didactic God doesn’t square with a picture of God as a moody patriarch who dispenses favors to his children on the basis of who supplicates most fervently.’

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I had my computer open last night, and Emilia saw the picture that I posted yesterday.

“That’s the picture that I drew for Grandpa!”

“I know, sweetie. I put it on my computer so that I could show it to other people. Is that okay?’

“Yeah. Do they know that I drew it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do they know that that’s his house in Heaven?”

“Yeah.”

“Do they know that that’s his motorcycle?”

“Yeah”

“I like that motorcycle.”

“Me too.”

“Do you think that Grandpa lets Jesus ride it?”

“I certainly hope so, sweetie. I certainly hope so.”

(Failing that – which, seriously, is pretty inconceivable, because a) my dad is a pretty generous guy, even with stuff like precious grandchild-designed pink motorcycles, and b) it’s JESUS – I hope that he’s doing this. Because, yeah.) (Thanks, rawp79!)

(Would still love for you to weigh in on the question from yesterday. You can also check out some of the great answers over at ParentsAsk and Momversation. And then ask maybe ask yourself, what WOULD Jesus do? WITH A PINK HARLEY?)

(Random weird necessary code thingy: Mippin feed validation KEY=8a97c9a5)

When my father died a few months ago, my daughter drew this picture:

‘This,’ she announced as we huddled over it together at my mother’s kitchen table, filling in the details, “is Grandpa’s Death House. It’s where he lives now.”

“I’m sure that he’s so happy that you made him such a wonderful Death House, sweetie. So happy.”

“He IS so happy. I made it so that every part of it is happy” – she pointed to the clouds made of hearts, the pink motorcycle balancing on the Christmas tree, the friendly shark (”because he needs pets”), the flowers nestled under the window through which the tiny shadow figures of her and her grandpa can be seen standing arm in arm – “so that he will be happy there. It’s where he lives now.” She pulled her crayon back from the picture and studied the finer detailing around the friendly ridgebacked shark. “Can we go visit him?”

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According to my father’s death certificate, the cause of his death is unknown. The autopsy that was performed when (oh, god, to write such words and remain detached is beyond my ability) his body was recovered was inconclusive. More tests were needed. We would have to wait – weeks, probably, the coroner told me – before we would know anything. In the meantime, the cause of death would be noted as unknown.

For a time, this bothered me. Then, once I’d set about the work of attending to the site of his death and life, I realized that it was possible to come to my own answers. And I did (this, a story that I am not yet ready to tell.) And while I cannot quite say that I was or am happy with that, I can say that I came to a sort of peace, and that the ’cause of death unknown’ notation on his death certificate – with all of the horrible implications that such a notation carries – ceased to bother me quite so much.

And then, today: a buzz on my phone, a flash of numbers, scrolling text. “Missed call. XXX-XXX-XXXX. Vernon-Shuswap Coroner’s Office.” And my heart plummeted.

I have not yet listened to the message. I cannot.

Tomorrow, I’ll return the call. Tonight, I’ll tell myself my own story about my father and his death, and remind myself that my own heart understands so much more than science can reveal.

And I will cling to that.

*all gratitude to e.e. cummings

Jasper’s getting so big. There are moments when – in just the right light, with just the right angle – he looks like a little boy. Which he is, I suppose. He’s almost seventeen months old. He’s a toddler. He’s still not saying much, but he is a force of energy who spends every waking minute – and even some unwoken minutes – asserting his presence in the world. He runs, he jumps, he shrieks and hoots and giggles and siezes each and every single day by the cookies.

And then he stops for a moment and pauses and his boyish stillness takes my breath away.

I still haven’t cut his hair. Oh, I’ve snipped at his bangs a little – I did this at my Dad’s house, actually, and I let the wisps of baby hair fall into the cedar bushes surrounding his front steps, where, I imagined, they’d bind, however intangibly, this moment in Jasper’s babyhood to my father’s history – but I’ve otherwise let his fluffy yellow curls just tumble into a baby-mullet, the better to preserve his babyness, the babyness that I’m so loathe to let go of.

(’Of which I’m so loathe to let go’? Lack of sleep is interfering with my grammar. It is also interfering with my ability to think clearly, which is why this post is turning into a sort of stream-of-consciousness revery.)

(On my list of books to re-read, if I ever regain clarity of mind and a spare half-hour in any given day: Rousseau’s Reveries Of A Solitary Walker. I reappropriated the copy that I’d given my Dad. I’ve not yet flipped through to see if he made notes in the margins, which was his habit, as it is mine. I hope, fervently, that he did, although I have moments of hoping, equally as fervently, that he did not, so that I might revisit that book without being haunted.)

(I’ve asked before whether it is odd to wish both to be haunted and to not be haunted. I still have not settled upon an answer.)

(Did I mention? STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Also, HAVE NOT SLEPT.)

Today is one of those days – and don’t such days always seem to occur in autumn? – when times seems to be passing both too quickly and too slowly. The leaves on the trees are turning and dying and falling and for every moment that seems to take an eternity – a leaf floats to the ground while we wait for the school bell to ring – there’s another – that same leaf is snatched up by a wee bemittened hand and stuffed in a pocket – that passes in an instant.

All of these moments – the still moments, the rushed moments, the moments that have passed and those that have yet to pass – are precious. I’m taking time to remember that. I’m taking time to practice being still, myself. I’m taking time.

I hope that there’s a lot of it left.

Some days, there are just no words for the depth and breadth of her awesome.

There are, however, words for what it feels like to be spiritually confused, and I have plenty of those: over at Their Bad Mother, I’ve been rehashing a question that has been plaguing me since I became a mother – one that has become all the more confused and complicated since the death of my father – can I be a good parent without God? How do I meaningfully introduce my children to God when I’m ambivalent (deeply ambivalent) about organized religion? And why do I worry about this stuff, anyway? You know, just a little light existential interrogation for a Wednesday afternoon. For fun.

PS: For all of your warm and supportive comments on my last post, thank you. Thank you. Your kindness and patience make all the difference.

PPS: MamaPop is up for an award. You know that it deserves one; nay, MANY. Please to help?