Image description: blurry accidental photograph close up of a tree: brown bark, blurry gold leaved. Green blurred trees in background. Taken in Dundonald Park on Halloween in the morning of a warm day.
The bedroom window is open. The wind is howling. It is just after 7 am. The curtain is closed but it is still darkish out.
I love November. I think it is the problem child of the year and that is one of the reasons why I love it. November needs love. In November the trees are bare and we get to see their naked bark, all their scars, their true configurations: the gnarled knots, twisted branches, deep blacks and browns exposed to the cold, the wind, the rain and the snow. November is when we truly realize that summer is over and we have to figure out how we are going to cope with…neigh celebrate the forthcoming winter.
In my case November is the month that was almost my last. It is the month of my survival. On November 11, 2009, while I was in ICU at the Ottawa General Hospital, doctors told my husband I was not going to live. A dear friend had invited him over for dinner. He was there when he got the call. She drove him to the hospital. He suggested she should come in to ICU to see me: this might be the last time. Only Charles and dear C saw me on my last day. I know this only from what Charles has told me. In November every year we retell this story and all the stories relating to my near death health crisis. Much of it I know only from Charles. I was too ill to be aware. On medication. Intubated. In an ICU bed, attached to life saving and monitoring machines. Having delusions. I was not in a coma. Well meaning people want to think I was but I wasn't. The drugs I had been given took away my short term memory. That is all.
On November 11, doctors told my husband he had a choice. I could die in ICU or on the operating table while they performed an exploratory surgery to figure out what was wrong with me. He chose operating table. And I survived.
So yes, I love November. I will be celebrating every fucking day in November. This is what I will do.
Image description: a painted blue rabbit on a wall of pink, white, green, orange in Chinatown. Artist unknown.
I will willingly go down rabbit holes here and in person.
Soon I will gift paid subscribers with an out of print chapbook in pdf form that I made for C, the one who came to see me in ICU.
Please savour this month on my behalf and celebrate. And American friends, I worry for you. I am thinking of this time in your history. I hope democracy prevails.