Life speeds up

Somehow my favourite month is over already. May gets my vote for many reasons: increased temperatures, the promise of summer,  and a variety of fragrant, flowering trees everywhere. After a busy month of family activities, we started off last week with a bike ride to Ottawa's Experimental Farm.

Even on a cloudy day, it's a pleasure to walk among the gardens there.

 As we admired the lilacs, I was reminded of so many past trips to The Farm over the years; with our parents, our children and grandchildren. There's a spot where I remember one of my former work colleagues, Shukri, from Kenya. She assisted my class when I taught ESL to women from Somalia. I took them on their first trip to the farm and they loved it. When we walked among those lilacs Shukri declared, "Tonight I will come back to this spot with my blanket and sleep under this tree."

Tuesday, May 30th was the twenty year anniversary of Peter Gzowski's last Morningside Show.  The Sunday Edition marked  the occasion by airing a collection of clips from the show. This seven minute segment is a lovely reminder of a very special time in Canadian radio. Just listening to that opening theme again filled me with nostalgia for that unique time in my life, in Canada's life. I  count myself as incredibly fortunate, to have had the opportunity to listen to Peter Gzowski's Morningside for most of his fifteen year run. I was home with my children starting in 1980. Gzowski started in 1982. Anyone who has spent years at home with toddlers knows it is challenging in so many ways, not least of which is the lack of adult stimulation.  For those of us feeling somewhat isolated in our homes, as we cared for our little ones, Morningside provided a welcome background to our mornings. We laughed, we learned, we cried, we sang, as he united us and introduced us to our fellow Canadians.

The great thing about the show was that it was a magnificent mix. It wasn't just arts and culture. Camp, Kierans and Lewis provided our weekly political fix. It was a bit of everything and it worked well. We cared for our kids and homes while listening to the entertaining, eclectic mix that was Morningside. In the twenty years since, it has not been matched.

Last week marked another anniversary; fifty years since the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. How could it be fifty years already? I still have my album. One of the cute little ditties on that album is When I'm Sixty-Four. At the time it was released, that song was a cheeky looking- ahead, to an age that seemed almost impossible to imagine, for the Beatles and certainly for me. I was only fourteen at the time. Somehow, last week, I reached that milestone myself. I was happy to mark the occasion with a visit to my parent's home where I picked my favourites, lily of the valley.

Along with these anniversaries have come the recent deaths of a few relatives. In two cases we heard that the families were searching for the funeral plans and wishes. What if, like most of us, they never got around to making plans? This has finally sparked some discussion of our death and dying wishes. It's a subject we have been avoiding. We are a death-denying society for sure. If for no other reason, it is an act of kindness for our families,  to make some kind of a plan. At this point we don't have all the details nailed down, but at least we have started the discussion and made a few basic decisions.

Who knows how long we will have? That's the great mystery of our lives. The fifty years since Sgt. Pepper came out have vanished. Gzowski died just five years after his show finished, at the age of sixty-seven. Stuart McLean, who we came to know on Morningside, died this past year at sixty-eight.

Life seems to be speeding up. It's time to plan. It's also important to make more time for trips to The Farm, for concerts, travel and fun. So for now, we will make those plans, put them away and enjoy the rest of this unpredictable ride.