Okay, one career i know i would never want to pursue is that of a harbour master, especially on an August long weekend/week, it is similar to watching or understanding the logistics of trading at the NYSE or managing crowd control at a Beatles concert (ok well back in the day)Thank God my husband speaks the language and in his own way somehow translates it for me as we are approaching breaakwaters and dock fingers , giving me just enough time to jump on the bow of the boat and lead us into dockspace which usually requires moving boats aside with various parts of my body. This was to be Stormy Dawn's maiden voyage and my intent was to chronicle the adventure along the way, but limited service and long navigating days left little time for story writing.
It was quite a feat just getting to Desolation Sound/Lund Harbour basically it requires packing up everything you own including 2 vehicles 2 rv's and just enough room for the "just in case Mastercard." Darcy's truck, a little finicky... lets just say he's the only one who knows how much you can set the emergency brake , when we sent the truck and trailer up by barge one of his well meaning coworkers set the brake to its full capacity which resulted in smoking brakes by the time we got to the marina, mechanical issues and we're not even there yet...day 1.
The next day we put the boat in the water and off we went with full intentions of circling the Copeland and Discovery islands ...10 minutes and we were back in harbour , stupid boat, i couldn't help but feel terrible for Darcy all the blood sweat and tears that went into this boat over the last couple of months and my newly practiced skill of patience felt useless now. So you would think that boat mechanics would be happy to see you considering the barrell they can have you over on an August long weekend, i swear i saw dollar signs in their corneas as we slither into their boat garage praying our boat doesn't end up in the graveyard of unfixables. After 3 "way too busy's" we finally found a mechanic in town and really what im sure Dacy wanted to say was " just let me have your shop for an hour, i don't need you" yeah that would be like saying "just give me your wife for an hour , i promise i wont wreck anything" ...i think there was a moment he was contimplating a trade there as i became frustrated with my vacation hours slipping away from me. Cha ching a few hours later and were outta there and back on the water.
The girl's only destination desire was Savory island for photo ops of eachother in white bikinis against a backdrop of white sand beaches and turquoise waters. Well they were going to have to work for it this year , this new( to us) boat is a little bigger and little deeper V and unable to shore up, over board they go and swim to shore ( there are no public docks ) we discovered Mystery reef , no mystery if you have a depth sounder , water goes from 480 ft to 8 ft of water in a split second...YIKES!
Next day we were off to Hernandez Island and Cortes Island , named after Spansih exlporer Hernando Cortes in the 1800's. We made it to Squirrel cove on Cortes, beautiful , remote, quaint, rocky bluffs and a great little restaurant right on the water, the best cold watermelon soup and beet salad and shirley temples (as far as Brittanny was concerned). Something very crass about being a family of five and being seated at a table with 6 chairs , instant reminder of something , someone missing.
We skipped Hernando Island when we found out that it is a private Island where tourists are greeted by shotguns, no thanks , my adventurism isn't that needy. Time for the kids to catch their dinner ...off to the island of Major rock where we lowered our prawn and crab traps, 5 dozen prawns over a couple days and one sad little crab , sunset, wine ...sounds like dinner for 2 , sorry kids hotdogs for you (jk they dont like seafood...thank goodness) Ahhh the sunsets, the colour of coral everynight , and everynight we'd hear Darcy enlighten us with his "red sky at night sailors delight ...balh blah blah , toward the end of the trip he would just mumble it to himself ...too many eyerolls i guess. Campground was quiet , various people that camped next to us only seemed to stay one night and then be off...hmm could the bickering of my children possibly have anything to do with it ...way to go kids , i knew that would come in handy. Chocolate cheerios for breakfast and smores before bed will do that. Hey chocolate cheerios, just in case you are judging me is a once a year camping treat and allows Darcy and i to slip away for cinnamon buns and something other than camp coffee at the little marina bakery.
Over the next few days we spotted sea lions and even a dolphin and shellfish galore at Okeover Arm, however, it was red tide and i wasn't going to take the chance of getting sick , apparently the shellfish don't mind us though , bit on the foot by a baby crab, good thing he swam fast or i woulda cooked him up for the hell of it. If you're into kayaking this is the place.
We were able to celebrate our anniversary 22 years (30 years together) and Britt's bday at our favourite little restaurant at the marina. We gave Brittanny decorative little doggy bags, they cost a buck at the dollar store, however, i have never seen a kid more happy in all my life , she knew what it meant, she was finally getting the dog she had been begging for for months, promising us the moon and the stars, its been 2 years since we put Sophy down and i guess the timing was right. Time flew by and bittersweet as it was it was time to pack and leave for the 2 ferry ride home and , you know the journey home almost went smooth,but hey smooth just never seems to be our motto and it seems to hit at the most inopportune time , 30 minutes before our final ferry ride home ,getting into our boarding lane and something snaps on the boat trailer ..."You've got to be kidding me!" Don't ask me really what happened , my brain shuts off when people (Darcy) get talking mechanical crap, all i know is that people are wonderful, within seconds of seeing Darcy under the trailer frantically trying to fix the brokenness we must have had 6 guys and even a couple women offering assitance, whatever they did and despite the several theories of how to fix it , it got done , Darcy with a gash on his head and mickey mousing whatever was wrong we made it on the ferry,probably never to see these people again but knowing we had a pay it forward debt to repay. Darcy looked for them on the ferry but none of them seemed to be there , crap , hope they didn't lose their place in line and get bumped off. Wasn't sitting well with Darcy so he had the ferry announcer guy send out a big thank you from us, maybe they were just tansient angels , but whoever they were...again we are blessed.
Home Sweet home and yes an extra member ...Emma... would you believe a Yorkshire terrier , similar to Sophy, rather ghostly watching Brittanny (so similar to Ash) but a sight for sore grieivng eyes. Home, but thinking a proper anniversary boat excursion minus the mayhem (and kids) is in order very soon...kind of a vacation from the vacation....all in all it was another adventure.
P.S. did I mention the butterflies? Abundant and exotic and always closeby
Peace
Lori
The Journey of a butterfly...Ashleys life has become symbolic of a butterfly, peaceful beautiful and free to fly where the wind takes her. We have a white butterfly that flies around us in the garden in the springtime where the other girls play. Irish folklore tells us that a white butterfly is the rebirth of a deceased child's soul reborn into something even more beautiful than before...our butterfly
June 29 1992 - February 16 2009
Welcome to the Journey of a Butterfly
We invite you to follow along one family's journey through grief and loss, one brave young girl's journey through faith and inspiration, this is not a blog to convert anyone , nor is it a blog about fundraising , it is what i hope will reach another family on a similar journey, we are not experts , i could not give you a magic remedy for how one gets through disease and devestation but it is our story , sometimes gut wrenching other time heartwarming and all of the time, i guarantee, very real. We are not perfect, we struggle daily and i think that the more we connect to one another the more we understand what this journey through life is all about . Sometimes that path is bumpy and we fall down, sometimes we sit and stop a while,or take a step back and other times we pound our fists on the pavement like a lunatic , still other times we find ourselves picking eachother up dusting eachother off and walking alongside them even if only for short time. This blog is dedicated to Ashley , her sisters and every single angel that picked us up along this road.
This is an introduction to the beginning and middle part of our journey the specific blogs are more indepth , the end...well there will never be an end to this journey i've come to realize that , not on this earth, for now we just assimilate it into our life like a hole , a missing limb, a continous ache that you just learn to live with.
When Ashley was about 12 years old she asked if she could go to youth group at a local church , i didn't have any church upbringing but know i craved it throughout my life , this was a rare opportunity and i recognized that if i didn't embrace it now she may lose her interst in it very quickly and beocme a jaded, cynical, stubborn person like her mom. My husband grew up in a very religious (shove it down your throat) kinda religion( i wont mention any names)or maybe it was the way he was raised ? Anyways i encouraged her to go because the community we had moved to embraced this kinda thing so i thought why not? Naturally and shortly after she started attending she was soon encouraging us to go , she had made quite a leadership name for herself there , pionner leader , sunday school helper etc, i was comfortable for the first time in my life going to a church, maybe it was the first word that greeted you as you walked in..."belong" maybe it was because they embraced community and outreach service in our city , dont know, but soon found it very therapeutic, cheaper than a shrink, and our other 3 girls jumped on board pretty quickly, my husband well... a work in progress , he communes with God in a fishing boat he says , although makes many efforts to go even if just for good way to start the week, i was still cynical , felt i wasnt holy enough but went anyways.
Ashley was scheduled to sing a solo in the church choir Dec 16 2007 , i was scared for her, i was sure she got her singing skills from me which was nil at best. She sang beautifully and you couldnt tell she had been complaining of cramps , something i chalked up to girls stuff/growing pains for a couple weeks off and on, she was an active healthy girl. When the performnce was done we got our christmas tree and i took her to the clinic to have it checked out before Christmas , they sent us to our local hosptial for tests , i was worried it was appendix. Darcy, my husband left the hosptial to go pick up our other 3 girls from friends houses , i caught the doctor in the ahallways and asked if the ulstrasound pictures were back, i remember having eye contact with Ashley only feet away from me but far enough away for her not to hear the doctor to so impassionaltely say "its not appendix, it looks like cancer", i have to stop as i write this because it is still one of the 2 biggest shocks in my entire life, i think i ran down the hallways screaming with no sound coming from my throat and not knowing where i was running . I phoned Darcy and words didnt come out of my mouth. Before I knew it we were at out local Childrens Hospital(100km away) meeting oncologiosts , being give an "oncology team" which consisted of a primary nurse, a social worker, a main oncologist and a shrink....wait a minute ...what is an oncologist? yep, a cancer doctor, this was the real thing . we waited 4 days to find out what type we were dealing with ... it was curable 90 % even though she was stage 4 , how the hell can my kid have stage 4 cancer and only a few cramps , it was mind bending. We were thrown stright into a world so foriegn to us , everything stopped ..jobs ..PAC meetings ,carppoling and yes even some friends who"couldn't handle it" it was no longer our own beds , our own home, our own anything. Treatments and life became unbearable , the 90% cure rate was not looking good at any stage throughout our journey , it seemd to be always full of negative news to the point where i couldnt stand the face of her oncologist , it nearly made me want to vomit everytime i saw him...The words they briefed us on as we began this mind altering path was " one of you will grieve through this process and no matter the out come the other will grieve after " they couldn't have been more right.......Ashley insisted on going to church on Christmas eve, two nights before she was to start chemo at the end of the service our pastor came to pray with us , i didn't know many people in the church , but wow did they know Ashley, when we rose our heads from bowing in prayer the whole congregation was surrounding us , i knew at that moment who i was going to need to get me through this ...would he be willing to listen to me...
